This Week’s Tech Term: Blockchain
As one of the most important emerging technologies out there at the moment, speculation about blockchain, and its growing list of practical applications, has run rampant. Soon, someone will come out with a blockchain application that makes and delivers pizzas. In all seriousness, it really holds a lot of promise for the development of interesting applications. For this week’s tech term, we look at the blockchain.
Hackers Are Hunting for This Particular Information
While not always the case, hackers will generally act with a purpose. They might be looking to snatch some personally identifiable information from a database, or account credentials form unwary users. Regardless, hackers will go to any length to collect this information from unsuspecting users, and you need to do what you can to protect it.
What Do Hackers Look For?
Most businesses hold at least some type of sensitive information that hackers can use to their advantage. Believe it or not, sensitive information can be sold on the black market for considerable profit. Consider for a moment the information collected by a human resources department, or accounting. Information like employees’ birth records, Social Security numbers, contact information, credit card numbers, bank routing numbers, and so much more, all represent value to hackers and scammers.
When they aren’t trying to directly cause trouble for your business, they may try to covertly access your data infrastructure through the use of stolen credentials to make their hijinx look legitimate. They can then access your accounts and steal information without drawing attention to themselves, resulting in a major data breach that puts your business in a tight spot.
There are also incidents where hackers are just trying to make trouble for others, or planting the seeds of a future attack through the use of a trojan or backdoor. The end result is typically the same–your business’s operations are halted due to meddling from hackers, and it must be prevented.
What You Can Do
Your best chance to protect your organization from hacking attacks is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution. A UTM combines four enterprise-level security solutions into one package: a firewall, antivirus, spam blocker, and content filter, all to provide both proactive and reactive strategies to protect your network. It’s the best way to secure your infrastructure from hacking attacks of all varieties.
Don’t keep placing network security on the backburner. To learn more about network security and what we can do for your business, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Tip of the Week: Looking to Free Up Hard Drive Space? This Free Tool Can Help
No matter how much we wish it weren’t so, all PCs have limited amounts of storage space on them. This means that the user will eventually run out of space, and they will have to find a way to resolve this issue as soon as possible so as to avoid unsaved work. Plus, your performance will take a hit, so it’s best to look for a way to resolve this issue. Thankfully, a free tool like WinDirStat can help you free up space by identifying where all of your free space is being taken up, and how you can make some wiggle room with your PC’s largest files.
Before we dig into the details, we want to add a disclaimer about deleting any large files that might be on your company-provided computer. Users should always check with a company’s IT administrator before deleting anything large like this on their PC. By doing so, you could avoid accidentally deleting files and apps that are crucial to your organization.
The Windows Directory Statistics, or WinDirStat, is a tool that lets you see a visual “treemap” of how the space on your hard drive is being used. To download this free app, just go to the developer’s website: https://windirstat.net/download.html
When you first open up WinDirStat, the program will read your drive’s directory tree and show you three displays:
- Directory List: You’ll see what looks like a tree view of Windows Explorer, but it will be sorted by file type and subtree size.
- Treemap: You’ll be shown the entirety of the directory tree.
- Extension List: This shows statistics regarding file types.
Each of these files are represented by colored rectangles, and the size is proportionate to the file’s size. You will notice that these rectangles are arranged by directories and subdirectories. Therefore, the rectangles will be proportionate to the size of the subtrees. Additionally, the colors of the rectangles will indicate file type, and you can use the extension list to find the color that you’re looking for.
With this knowledge in mind, you’ll be able to make the best decisions possible regarding which files you want to delete to free up space for other uses However, you still need to be wary that deleting this files isn’t the only option at your disposal. Deleting large files that could hold value, like a video, simply because you don’t access it frequently, would be foolish. It’s ideal to simply get it removed from your drive through the use of an external drive, a network drive, or the cloud.
Granted, if your goal is to free up hard drive space and improve the way that your PC functions, you’re better off reaching out to professional technicians like those at Catalyst Technology Group. We can help your organization get the most out of its technology solutions, including your data storage procedures, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.