News - Kinetics

Urgent Security Warning – Nitro PDF

22 Nov 2020 Comments off

CERT NZ have issued a warning about Nitro PDF. It’s a common PDF tool that users log into to share documents. Unfortunately, there are reports that hackers have breached their database We’re being told that “Nitro PDF, a PDF enterprise document creation and sharing web application, has experienced a significant data breach. A person claiming to [...]

Keeping our Security tools up to speed

16 Nov 2020 Comments off

That sort of money buys cyber criminals a lot of resources. It’s no surprise then that cybercrime has its own support industries. You don’t need to access the "Darknet" to purchase hacker tools. Many are commercially available (you can even buy them on Amazon!) and have a thin veneer of respectability. For example, they advertise [...]

GOOD PROCESS WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH – SCAMMERS STILL WON

12 Nov 2020 Comments off

In August we all heard about Team NZ falling prey to a $2.8 million invoice payment fraud. It was the now-familiar story of a fake or hacked email, asking for payment to go to a different bank account. We should all be familiar with these tales by now. I’m sure that by now every business has in place a process for checking the validity of such a [...]

Hacking the hackers (aka what goes around, comes around)

06 Nov 2020 Comments off

Even hackers can be hacked! Isn't that serendipitous? There is a website, Cit0Day.in, which hosts 23,000 hacked databases. Access is available at a cost, daily or monthly subscription. Hackers mine this data for passwords and other information. They then use this data to crack open accounts of higher value. Its ironic then, that the site itself [...]

40 years of the IBM PC

06 Nov 2020 Comments off

For our working generation, desktop computers have been a mainstay of our work life. Its a very different world to the generation before us. In fact this month marks 40 years since IBM signed two young men from a new business called 'Microsoft' to write the operating system "MS-DOS" for their new PC. November 6th 1980 Many of us cut our teeth on [...]

When imitation isn’t flattery!

28 Oct 2020 Comments off

According to CheckPoint, Microsoft is THE most imitated brand on the internet. We all know that criminals like to pretend to be Microsoft for their phishing attempts, and in the last quarter, misuse of the Microsoft brand for this jumped dramatically – 19% of all brand attempts are pretending to be from Microsoft. Second place is DHL at 9%. Its [...]

Webinar: is your IT Partner missing the point?

05 Oct 2020 Comments off

Most IT support partners miss the most important task of all. ie what does it really take to be a valued IT Partner All IT partners will talk to you about tickets, capacity planning and life cycle replacements, cloud migrations and cyber security. But that’s just table-stakes. There’s something [...]

Plucking the low-hanging fruit!

02 Oct 2020 Comments off

We recently moved our phones to Microsoft Teams. It’s an increasingly common configuration and means we have a single programme for our real-time collaboration. There’s nothing like a project that removes infrastructure and risk. We have less to maintain, but we can do so much more than we could before. It’s easier to setup conference calls and [...]

What is Double Key Encryption and why should you care?

27 Sep 2020 Comments off

Like the name suggests, this is even MORE secure than the levels of encryption previously seen. Microsoft are saying that you need it if: You want to ensure that only you can ever decrypt protected content, under any circumstance. You don't want Microsoft to have access to protected data on its own. You have regulatory requirements to hold [...]

Our FIVE favourite new features in Teams – which ones did you know about?

20 Sep 2020 Comments off

Its hard to imagine working through the lockdown without fast fibre internet connections and tools like Microsoft Teams. There is nothing like an imperative to help us drive change and we have seen that with Teams evolving rapidly to meet market needs. Here are our top FIVE recent enhancements. How many did you know about already? 1. - you can now [...]