Announcement – Project Lazarus

CTC NEWS
I alluded to it in my After Action Report for the CrowdStrike incident but one of the takeaways was that the fix was a relatively simple one but many administrators and support personnel were left without the ability to connect to the impacted computers. As a small MSP, this resonated with our team since a large scale event requiring a manual fix, like the CrowdStrike failure, impacting multiple client sites at once would be difficult for us to address quickly. It's still very much in the early stages but I'm excited to announce what we're calling Project Lazarus. Project Lazarus is a bootable USB drive that, as long as the hardware is still functional, will allow customers to boot the machine, connect to to the Internet and get our team…
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After Action Report – CrowdStrike

After Action Report – CrowdStrike

Industry News, Tech news
As many of you know, an issue with an update to CrowdStrike, a security platform installed on literally millions (if not billions) of computers worldwide, caused a global IT Outage on Friday and many organizations (and IT workers) are still feeling the sting of that outage today. The root issue appears to have been a bad configuration update from CrowdStrike that prevented affected systems from booting. We are thankful that none of our clients were directly impacted but the incident provides an excellent opportunity to "sharpen the saw" and update our internal processes. In this email, I'd like to quickly summarize what happened, some key things that we took away from the incident and some changes that we're making in as a result. What happened? CrowdStrike released a corrupt configuration…
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July 2024 News and Updates

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Monthly Newsletters, Tech news
Client Forms - In an effort to make requesting support easier for common tasks (onboarding and offboarding users, for example), we are launching a number of forms that clients can use to request support. Links to the forms are located at the top of our website under Client Forms. Windows Recall - We received a surprising amount of feedback on the blurb about Windows Recall in last months newsletter and, not surprisingly, literally none of it was positive. The common thread in all of the feedback was basically what are the alternatives? We don't really have a plan, just yet, but we do have some ideas. Expect more on this next month and, if you're concerned about Windows Recall for whatever reason (privacy, regulatory compliance, etc.), keep an eye out…
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Please update your FortiGate

Industry News, Tech news
What is this about? In February of this year, Fortinet disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in the FortiOS firmware, the operating system for their entire line of products. The vulnerability was highly publicized by Fortinet, The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), news outlets, message boards and on social media and we reached out directly to all of our MyIT Clients. The vulnerability is significant because it's position in a network, often running on the Internet facing firewall protecting that network from Internet borne threats, means it's exploitable from anywhere on the Internet and successful exploitation could give an attacker full access to a vulnerable device. It's also important to note that state sponsored threat actors are known to favor (and target) these types of vulnerabilities. What do I need to…
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We will be closed July 4th

CTC NEWS
Cyber Tech Cafe will be closed on Thursday, 4 July 2024 in observance of Independence Day to enjoy time with family, friends and loved ones. We will reopen on Friday, 5 July 2024 at 9:00am ET. We will have on-call support available for commercial and MyIT clients via the emergency support option on the phone or by adding 'emergency' to the subject line of support email. From all of us at Cyber Tech Cafe, we wish you a happy Fourth of July and are eternally grateful to the men and women who have fought to win and preserve our freedom.
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CDK Breach – Threat actors now contacting CDK customers directly.

CTC NEWS, Tech news
We are working with a number of clients who have been impacted by what is, I believe, now officially being referred to publicly by CDK as an attack and, specifically, multiple attacks. This latest development (the threat actors are reaching out to CDK Customers directly) confirms that there was data, at the very least customer lists and contact info, taken during the attack. Details are sketchy and there are a lot of moving parts behind the scenes so this post will be a) short, b) in no particular order and c) vague but there are a number of common questions / concerns / comments that we're getting that I'm hoping to address with this post. For those who don't know who CDK is or why this may be important, CDK…
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June 2024 News and Updates

CTC NEWS, Monthly Newsletters, Uncategorized
Client Forms - In an effort to make requesting support easier for common tasks (onboarding and offboarding users, for example), we are launching a number of forms that clients can use to request support. Links to the forms are located at the top of our website under Client Forms. Google Chrome has been the subject of a number of critical security vulnerabilities over the past few days. Google Chrome typically does a pretty good job of patching itself but a restart of Google Chrome will be required for the updates to be applied. Additional information is available here. Windows Recall - Microsoft has recently announced a controversial new feature called Windows Recall . There's a good article on it over at Ars Technica but the short version is basically that…
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This Friday is Moving Day!

CTC NEWS
We will be closing the office at 148 West Main Street on Thursday, 14 March 2024 for the last time and will be opening at our new location at 319 North Tennessee Street on Monday, 18 March 2024. We will be closed on Friday, 15 March 2024 to work on getting everything moved to and setup in the new location.
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February 2024 News and Updates

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Tech news
We're Moving Cyber Tech Cafe will be moving our office to 319 North Tennessee Street, Cartersville GA on 15 March 2024. Our mailing address will remain the same. Urgent Update from Fortinet - Fortinet disclosed on 8 February 2024 a significant vulnerability in basically their entire firewall product line. The vulnerability can allow an attacker with access to the VPN interface on the affected device the ability to run code on the device. According to reports, the vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. If you are a MyIT Client, you should have received an email on Tuesday with details on the vulnerability and, in most cases, your firewall has already been updated. If you are not a MyIT Client, we would recommend installing the update immediately if at…
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