I stare at the Paladin Sentinel Monitoring Console every morning and see what happened with our monitored servers and networks overnight. I see many patterns and similar events happening between your networks. Here is one of my pet peeves of what I often see with a free suggestion to help keep me calm in my […]
Tech Tidbit – Free PDF Tools Often Have Free Gifts Inside That You’d Rather Not Receive

Steps You Can Take Today to Improve Your District’s Cybersecurity Posture – Recording Available
At 5:30 am one morning, I was awoken by the sound of fire trucks. My neighbor’s house diagonally behind my house was on fire. The fire department promptly arrived within 15 minutes of the 911 call. Sadly, my neighbor died in the fire.

Tech Tidbit – Is your multi-factor authentication (MFA) as secure as you need it to be?
A few years ago, there was a very public cyber insurance denial case. As I understand it, the business contracted with Travelers for cyber insurance. They filled out their questionnaire and stated that they had multi-factor authentication (MFA) everywhere.

Tech Tidbit – While you were sleeping
It is Tuesday at 12:29 a.m., at the end of Labor Day weekend. I am driving back from Westchester County Airport, having just flown in from Charlotte, NC. A message comes through. It is our friends at the Blackpoint Cyber SOC. One of our client’s legitimate users detected initiated a first-time VPN connection to M365 […]

Tech Tidbit – Hacker’s Bag of Magic Tricks – Clean IPs
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” -Albert Einstein “You live in a world of illusion Where everything’s peaches and cream. We all face a scarlet conclusion, But we spend our time in a dream.” -Jungle Love, Steve Miller Band Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to network security.

Tech Tidbit – About Protecting Your Macs
I remember those days when the Apple folks would scoff at having to have antivirus. Macs were superior, and Windows devices had all those problems. The technical folks knew that was marketing blather vs. sound security advice. The reality has always been that “everything can be hacked.

Do You Have the Armor you Need?
Today’s cyber landscape feels a lot like this picture. Anyone who uses a device connected to the internet is under threat. You never know when that arrow with your name will find you. Do you have the armor you need to give you the best chance of survival when the arrow finds you? Medieval warriors […]

Using CPGs in Real Life – Develop and Exercise a Cyber Incident Response Plan
You arrive at work tomorrow and are greeted by the news that a cyber-attack has compromised your district’s network, and the network is unavailable. What is the first thing you do? What is the second? When confronted by such alarming news, most people would be overwhelmed and unsure of the next steps.

Tech Tidbit – A Different Take on Worldwide Backup Awareness Day
I read the other day that today is “Worldwide Backup Awareness Day.” I have no idea who declares these days. I am guessing you already know you should have good backups and air-gapped backups. However, I am taking the liberty of morphing this into more sophisticated forms of backups.

Tech Tidbit – Scott’s Top 5 List to Up Your Cyber Defenses
Here is my “Top 5” list to up your cybersecurity defenses: Make sure that whatever your current endpoint protection strategy is, it is 100% in place. There are always better tools. However, repeatedly, the attackers are exploiting gaps in your cyber defenses.