In November alone we’ve seen :- A small manufacturing business in Onehunga was infected by ransomware (unfortunately just as we were moving them onto our KARE system – if only that had started a few weeks earlier, we could have prevented it!) – cost $5,000 US in Bitcoins. A reasonable sized kiwi construction firm had their invoices [...]

It was Labour Weekend when I saw my first Christmas Mince pies in the shops.  I don't go to the shops terribly often so they may have been available for a while.  It wouldn't surprise me to see Easter Eggs out as well! If you are having a Christmas shutdown or reducing to a skeleton staff,  the Christmas/New Year period is an excellent [...]

Clients will appreciate that Kinetics has kept it’s hourly rates and support costs flat for a number of years.  It's getting increasingly hard to do that under the pressure of increased salaries and input costs. We’ll continue to keep maintain pricing as long as we can, although we will need to make a small adjustment in the next few [...]

There’s nothing like receiving an email like the one below to scare the hell out of you! One of our clients received this beauty last month. As you can imagine, they were horrified. We’re pretty confident that, despite the accusation, that they hadn’t in fact visited any porn sites. Nevertheless, it made them understandably uncomfortable. So [...]

Humans like to trust.  We trust everyday as we drive down the street that the people coming the other way will stay in their lane.  We trust that the restaurants we visit prepare our food properly and hygienically. We trust that our doctor knows what they are doing when they give advice and so on.  It's natural to trust. With so many threats - [...]

Regular readers will know that we are strong proponents of keeping software up-to-date to reduce security risks. While updates typically add new features, they also address any bugs that have been found, and overcome any software vulnerabilities. Over the years, this has stopped all-manner of hackers from causing harm.  In fact, our 'Kinetics KARE' service [...]

If only life were so simple!   We have some clients that ask us about file security in the cloud as if the answer is an absolute.  Of course it isn't. Assuming we’re talking about a reputable mainstream cloud, the answer is an emphatic ‘YES’, mostly. It makes sense that a major provider can afford to put multiple layers of expensive [...]

We've warned before about vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown. The basic precautions are to keep your Windows, Office and other software completely up to date, and of course keeping your anti-virus current. That’s going to stop most things but lately we’ve seen hackers exploiting literally every vulnerability, no matter how small. That got us [...]