Log4j Vulnerability is Almost Guaranteed to Impact Your Business

a man in a hooded sweatshirt typing on a keyboard

The major Log4j vulnerability has a widespread impact across various technology. We can’t stress how serious this is, and your business needs to take action right away.

What is Log4j?

We’ll keep it simple; programmers can utilize different programming languages when creating software. One of these languages is called Java, and in Java, programmers have “libraries” of instructions to work with. Log4j is one of those libraries.

A severe vulnerability has recently been discovered in the Log4j library that cybercriminals can exploit to gain access to your systems and data. It leaves your business and your information wide open to the world.

This particular Java library is pretty standard and is used in many applications and systems. It’s been used by some pretty popular products and services from some big names, like:

  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Cisco
  • Fortinet
  • Google
  • IBM
  • Microsoft
  • SonicWall
  • Sophos
  • VMware

…as well as others, large and small. Even the United States’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is affected.

Could The Log4j vulnerability impact my business?

The chances are pretty high that your business uses some software that utilizes Log4j, making it susceptible to vulnerability. We can’t stress enough that this affects the big guys in the list above, but everyone uses their software.

The risks are incredibly high, too—with the vulnerability just coming to light, cybercriminals are going to start exploiting it. This is called a Zero-Day vulnerability, and it’s a ticking time-bomb.

How Can My Business Be Protected from Log4j?

You need to apply your security patches and updates and ensure that the software you use—all of the software you use—is getting support from your vendors. Suppose you are using software that is no longer supported or no longer gets updated. In that case, you’ll need to audit that system to determine if it is affected by the vulnerability or not. We recommend setting up an appointment to have your entire network audited. You can get this started by giving us a call at PHONENUMBER.

The problem is, as a user, you can’t tell if a website or piece of software is using this particular Java library.

Everything Just Got a Little Riskier, So It’s Up to You To Protect Yourself

Since this vulnerability is so widespread, it’s likely to have a lasting impact across all technology for years. It’s more critical than ever to use vital password hygiene. “Password123” isn’t going to cut it anymore. Everyone needs to start using strong passwords and use unique passwords across every single website and account they use. Otherwise, when one system is breached due to this vulnerability, cybercriminals will be able to use the passwords they stole from one account to get into others. This involves following the primary password best practices that we always talk about, like:

  • Using a unique password for each account and website
  • Using a mix of alphanumeric characters and symbols
  • Using a sufficiently complex passcode to help with memorability without shorting your security
  • Keeping passwords to yourself

Audit your IT TODAY

You need to protect the interests and information of your employees and customers. We recommend contacting a professional and having all your technology reviewed and updated.

Give AE Technology Group a call at (516) 536-5006 to schedule an appointment. Don’t wait for the Log4j vulnerability to blow over—it’s going to be a dangerous situation for companies that don’t take action.

5 Ways to Improve Your Technology Troubleshooting

A businessman selecting a Troubleshooting button on a futuristic display with a concept written on it.

When you suffer from a technical difficulty, it’s your responsibility to ensure that it is handled in a timely fashion, whether reporting the issue to IT or taking care of it yourself. However, the process of troubleshooting can save you from waiting around while IT tinkers with your device’s settings. Let’s examine the five stages of troubleshooting and how you might try them yourself to improve your technology troubleshooting for your business.

Collect Information

First, you need to collect information that you can use to address the problem. What is the issue, and what is the scope? Is it one little thing on your PC, or is it a network-wide issue? If you collect as much information as you can, you’ll have an easier time talking to IT about it. Chances are they will try to replicate the issue, and all of this information will be invaluable towards this end.

Analyze Your Approach

Next, you’ll need to use this information to determine the best path toward resolving your issue. Is there anything relevant in the data you can fix the problem? You may have to adjust your approach based on your response to this question. It would be best to put a plan that is data-informed whenever possible.

Implement Your Solution

With a solid plan in place, you can implement the proposed solution. You’ll want to be extremely careful, though. You should only implement a solution that you know solves the problem at hand. If you are not confident in your technology, you should do more research until satisfied. The wrong answer could put you at a disadvantage.

Assess the Solution

After implementation, you’ll have to assess whether or not the solution worked. Some of the explanations you might implement are little more than stop-gaps that provide temporary fixes for more significant problems, which is fine in its way, so long as that is how you treat the solution. It’s your responsibility to know when to implement something better.

Document the Process

Now that you have a solid solution in place, you’ll want to ensure that your internal documents have recorded the processes for the fix. This helps others within your organization understand the spot for later on, and it can keep others from engaging in a long and challenging (and now unnecessary) troubleshooting process.

AE Technology Group wants to help you improve your technology troubleshooting and many other technology needs for your business. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

Break Your Break/Fix Cycle in 2021

Stressed computer engineer working on broken cables screaming in frustration

There are generally two approaches to technology maintenance. One of them addresses issues as they appear, and the other involves addressing possible issues before they become operational problems. How does your business go about technology maintenance? If it’s the first, also known as “break-fix” IT, then you are going about things the wrong way and leaving a ton of savings on the table.

One appropriate way of thinking about technology maintenance is like imaging IT as your car. When you purchase a vehicle, you try to take care of it as best you can because it is an investment that will hopefully yield a return on the costs associated with it. You want to keep it on the road so that you can keep getting value out of it over an extended period of time.

But what happens when your car starts to make strange noises and inconsistencies with operations start to appear? If these issues are small enough, you might think you can get away with ignoring them for a little while, as the car still gets you to your destination. If you ignore them long enough, though, you might find yourself stuck on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck to bring it to a garage.

From here, the folks at the garage take a look at the engine and try to diagnose your problems. The mechanics find that something serious is causing a problem within your vehicle that must be addressed, and the vehicle simply cannot function until the repairs have been made. You are left with questions about how much the repair job will cost, how long it will take, and whether or not your budget can handle it.

The same problems occur when small businesses run into technical problems. They might want to address these issues before they become problematic, but they don’t have the budget or the ability to do so. They try to avoid facing the problem until it becomes so bad that it cannot be ignored any longer, a practice that eventually creates more problems later on down the line. It’s better to resolve issues before they become this serious.

Relying on break-fix IT is simply not the best way to approach technology issues, especially when you don’t know what the problem is or how to address it. It’s better to outsource this responsibility to someone who can handle routine maintenance in order to prevent these types of costly breakdowns. That’s where our proactive IT services come into play!

With our knowledge and expertise, we can ensure that your business’ IT systems are monitored and maintained for any signs of wear and tear. We’ll know about weaknesses in your systems long before they impact operations, giving us ample time to address them before they create costly downtime and up-front costs for replacement parts/components. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

Proactive Services Are Keeping Business Running Fluidly

proactive technology services

2020 was filled with challenges and many small and medium-sized businesses have been put through the ringer. With everything still going on, and many things causing obstructions to business-as-usual, getting out in front of the things you can control can pay great dividends for your business. Today, we’ll take a look at how the Managed Service Provider can help you stay on top of everything.

What It Means to Be Proactive

A lot of business is preventing major swaths of downtime. Seriously, the more downtime you have, the less you get done. There are plenty of risks inherent in doing business, so being more proactive allows you to mitigate them more effectively. Think about it, a problem pops up in your business, you immediately stop what you are doing to fix the problem, which takes you away from the productive endeavor you were working on. By being proactive, however, you ensure that no problem exists, making certain that your time is used productively. If the effectiveness of your business comes down to the amount of time you can focus on it, being interrupted with constant problems to fix destroys that focus.

Avoiding Downtime

Your business isn’t some publicly-traded, multi-national company. If the most lucrative businesses faced even an hour of downtime, they are wasting six, sometimes, seven figures worth of capital. That’s why they routinely write proactive measures into their processes.

For your business, the amount of wasted capital will be substantially less, but it might just be a larger percentage of revenue lost or capital spent. This can sink your business; and, it doesn’t just come from having to stop what you are doing. Downtime can be problematic in these ways as well:

  • Customer frustration – Your relationships are extremely important. Too much downtime can have a major negative impact on your customer relations. Not only will customers be inconvenienced, they will let you know it. This time spent smoothing everything over can get extremely expensive, especially for the small business that needs their people to be productive, not engaging in costly support roles.
  • Staff frustration – As hinted at in the previous paragraph, many small businesses rely on their staff to do more than one job. One of those jobs isn’t always fun. That is a customer service representative. Many employees–especially if they were hired for a specific purpose–tend to get fed up when they have to spend a large chunk of their work life supporting a faulty product.
  • Exorbitant cost – Cost will always come with downtime. If you are paying people who should be building your product or service to sit around dealing with downtime, you are wasting valuable capital.

By being proactive you are effectively controlling the amount of downtime your organization has to deal with.

Being Proactive!

At AE Technology Group, a WheelHouse IT company, we offer a couple proactive services that could really make a difference in the profitability and efficiency of your business. They include.

  • Remote monitoring – Your hardware and network need to be in tip-top shape for your staff to be as productive as they can be. By remotely monitoring your entire IT infrastructure, our knowledgeable technicians can find even the smallest incongruency. Doing so before downtime has a chance to rear its head and affect your business works to keep downtime to a minimum and productivity high.
  • Cloud computing – Moving some of your IT to the cloud is a proactive move as public cloud resources are typically managed by the provider. Having a cloud provider take on the comprehensive management of your IT, while also gaining anytime, anywhere access, is a sound strategy for any-sized business.
  • Patch management – Software vulnerabilities can be a major problem for your business if the wrong people find out about them. Our team keeps your software patched and up to date.

Building a proactive business strategy can help you get out in front of some really difficult problems. Call our IT experts today to learn more at (877) 771-2384.

Why Use Managed Services in NYC?

managed services nyc

Managed Services are becoming a more popular option for NYC-based businesses that require IT support, security, and Cloud computing outcomes. With so many companies in this busy market securing these services, one has to ask why it has become such a popular offering. A brief overview of the situation reveals that Managed Services in NYC provide low-cost and local services that mitigate damage from downtime in one of the busiest places in the business world.

Managed Services Offer Expert Workers Without Onboarding

A popular reason for businesses to utilize Managed Services is that there is no need for a lengthy and expensive onboarding process for new workers. In fact, many companies that utilize IT services in their company are not hiring full-time staff at all. These businesses rely on companies like AE Technology Group, a WheelHouse IT company, to provide world-class IT services without having to keep someone on the payroll. By doing so, any business will reduce its costs, increase the effectiveness of the work completed, and have a much better chance of having any niche requirements fulfilled by the workers. Instead of hiring staff for IT solutions and more, it’s quicker, easier, and cheaper to hire a Managed Services team.

Our Location Reduces Costs

AE Technology Group has the benefit of being close to NYC while being far enough away to avoid the costs of operating in the city. AE Technology Group has branches on Long Island and in Fort Lauderdale, well outside of the five boroughs of New York City. As a result, the costs of doing business with this Managed Services Provider is often much lower than one would find in the city itself. Any company seeking Managed Services can save money on costs and still receive local business solutions by working with the Long Island branch.

Reduced Downtime Means You Lose Less

The word “downtime” strikes fear into every business manager that is operating in New York City. Every minute that your computers are not processing orders or helping workers get the information they need it means they’re losing money. The only way to stay on top of the busiest city on the planet is by having the best support available. Managed Services can help get your systems back online so that business can resume. AE Technology Group has years of expertise in IT, security, Cloud systems, and backups, meaning that the workers have seen and done it all. Many situations can be resolved off-site, too, reducing the time that it would take to have another business come into the city and diagnose the issue. Safeguard your business against lost time and work with local professionals.

AE Technology Group has Managed Services that provide fast, local, and inexpensive solutions to your everyday business problems. Your small or medium-sized company can feel confident not having an in-house IT department, saving the business time and money while ensuring that the work is completed by experts. Working with a third-party does not mean you are outsourcing the work to a faraway country that doesn’t mind your work hours. AE Technology Group is less than an hour away and poised to help at any time.

Give us a call at (516) 536-5006 or click here to request a quote.