If you are like most leaders in an organization, you don't have the time or motivation to do any sort of cybersecurity assessment to mitigate risk. It's easy to question security testing and ask, "why bother." After all, doesn't it take a lot of effort to do security testing when it may not turn up any results?

At CoNetrix we've helped many customers implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) over the past year. Most of these implementations have been to support employees working from home or migration to cloud-based services such as Microsoft 365. Overall I consider MFA to be a positive approach to improving account security and preventing unauthorized access due to phishing or weak passwords. But as MFA becomes more common, are there any "gotchas" that we need to consider?

Well, maybe it used to be the question, but it is no longer a question to be asked. Scanning your network is an essential part of your security protocol to ensure that customer information is secured. So, since I need to scan my systems for vulnerabilities, where do I start?

Tandem announces the release of Tandem Incident Management, a new software product for creating an incident response plan and tracking incidents as they occur. "With the current cyber climate, our customers are facing significant operational and reputational risks," said Brady Cook, General Manager for Tandem. "Our goal with the release of Tandem Incident Management is to give our customers the tools they need to prepare for the inevitable and effectively manage incidents."

The title for Best IT/Technology Company in Lubbock, Texas goes to CoNetrix for the third consecutive year. Multiple companies around the Lubbock area vied for KCBD's Best of the West designation. Viewers of KCBD News Channel 11 cast their votes through kcbd.com, selecting their favorite company in each Best of the West category.

CoNetrix has been selected as the best large employer to work for in Lubbock, TX. Other notable finalists for the award included Tyler Technologies and the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center. CoNetrix was also selected for the 3rd year in a row as the Best Business Computer Technology Company and the Best Computer/IT Services company.  

CoNetrix, a leading provider of information security and technology services, announces its participation in National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2020. By becoming a champion, CoNetrix joins the national campaign to help businesses stay safer and more secure online.

We all love our mobile devices. If you look around in any restaurant, walking down the street, even while driving (not a safe idea), you will see people glued to their mobile phones.  In the past few years, the line has blurred between our personal mobile devices and business devices.  Especially now, as a large part of the workforce is working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, personal mobile device use is the norm for millions of people. We must be prepared that many employees may want to continue using their personal mobile devices as they transition back to the workplace.

I recently worked with an admin user from one of our clients. Her account kept locking out each Friday @ 6 PM. I checked Netwrix and found the server that was locking the account. This was also in the event viewer on the domain controller. I checked the credential manager on that server for any cached accounts and found none. I checked the task scheduler and there were no scheduled tasks. I checked the event viewer to verify the lock out, and found the account was trying to connect to a CIFS share. The fix was to run this command as an administrator on that server: 'rundll32 keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr'.This will open a "Store User Names and Passwords" window. In that window, I found the user ID that was locking and removed it.

For most customer networks, file servers turn into a mess over the years. This is usually due to a few things. First, users have access to make folders at high levels and then place data in those folders that should have access restricted. Second, users try to solve the first problem by securing those folders, but end up breaking access to administrator accounts. Third, most lack a logical structure or any guidance as to where certain documents should be stored, so documents end up in multiple folders.I have been working with a customer who had all of these issues, along with the need to merge two file structures into a single structure after the merger of their two companies. My suggestion to the customer was to come up with a structure for five to ten top level folders that would be the shared folders. Their primary focus for the top level folders was by department (HR, Finance, Legal, etc.) We then tightly controlled the second to fifth levels, depending on the granularity needed of the specific folder. At the controlled levels, we did not allow users to make new folders or files and also prevented them from changing the permissions for these folders. We used a combination of list, read, and read/write access to all of these folders. We created an Active Directory group for each folder and the level(s) of access necessary for that folder. We then created additional groups in Active Directory based on job role and made these groups members of the Active Directory groups used for setting permissions on each folder.After setting all of the folder permissions, I found that the Owner of the file or folder had Full Control even if they should not have this level of control based on the NTFS permissions. This can be fixed by setting OWNER RIGHTS to none, which will cause the permissions explicitly defined to be enforce and not be circumvented by OWNER RIGHTS.The partial folder tree shown in the screenshots below is as follows:

There you are, working diligently at your computer when you receive the dreaded email.  You are invited (required) to attend the upcoming annual Employee Security Awareness Training session.  Oh no, has it already been a year?  Please, please don't make me sit through that long, boring training and waste an hour or more of my day, AGAIN.  Sound familiar?