Minimizing Ransomware Risk
Ransomware is dominating the headlines so far in 2016. The number and severity of ransomware attacks has been increasing. Recent ransomware attacks against school districts, healthcare providers, state and local governments, and enterprises illustrate that criminals have shifted away from targeting just consumers, and instead are focusing on companies who will pay higher ransoms.
Consider the following recent high-profile attack, and you’ll start to get an idea of how dangerous and nimble ransomware can be.
Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital – Using phishing to trick an unsuspecting employee, attackers seized the hospital’s entire IT system, stalled critical healthcare related communications and extorted $17,000 in ransom.
Companies and individuals who have been paying the ransoms have enabled the criminals that create these malicious programs, to ramp up development and make the attacks more sophisticated. Apple OS X – Typically thought of as less vulnerable to viruses and malware, still ransomware hackers are now successfully targeting OS X systems through sophisticated phishing emails that use malware to encrypt the data and render it inaccessible until a ransom is paid.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports seeing a dramatic increase of these type of cyber-attacks paired with increasingly higher ransom requests. If the first quarter of this year is any indicator, we’ll see the number of ransomware incidents surpass last year’s record, which totaled 2,453 reported incidents and approximately $24.1 million in ransom paid by victims.
So how do I help Minimize Risk?
- Monitored Backups–The most common advice to recover from an attack by ransomware relies largely on whether a good backup policy is employed for your data and entire system backups. Store backups in an offline environment because many ransomware variants will try to encrypt data on connected network shares and removable drives. If possible, use a hybrid backup solution that keeps copies of your data locally and in the cloud. This way if one of your backups is compromised you will have a greater chance of success in restoring your data.
- Layered Security–Having a layered approach to security should be taken seriously for repelling ransomware. The best way to protect against a virus is to have defenses to ensure you never receive any viruses in the first place. Deploy a layered approach utilizing technologies such as anti-virus, web filtering and firewalls. Apply access controls, including file, directory, and network share permissions to limit the exposure of non-administrator users to sensitive data.
- Stay Updated–Frequently update anti-virus and anti-malware with the latest signatures and perform regular scans. Create an application whitelist, allowing only specific programs to run on a computer.
- Request Support–If you have questions, do not be afraid to call your IT department or vendor. They will be able to help you try to minimize the damage and get started on data recovery.
Press Release 11/6/2013 – The Sheldon
Julie Tucker, Assistant Director of The Sheldon, receives a donation from Crissy Hopp, the owner of Kyvon. Kyvon provides voice/data equipment and services to the Sheldon. The Sheldon is located at 3648 Washington Blvd. in St. Louis, MO.
Join us at Business & Community Fair
Kyvon would like to invite you to join us at the Business & Community Fair on Wednesday, May 29th 2013 3:30pm. The event will be held at Rockwood Summit High School – 1780 Hawkins Road – Fenton, MO 63026 and is free to the public. We are located at booth #49. For more information please visit http://www.fentonmochamber.com. Hope to see you there!
Emergency Network Maintenance Window
Maintenance Window Start Date & Time: October 12th, 2012 11:30 PM CT
Maintenance Window End Date & Time: October 13th, 2012 1:30 AM CT
Impact on Customers: Maximum of 15 minutes downtime
Scope of Work:
XIOLINK and Kyvon will be working in cooperation on an
emergency router configuration change. It is necessary to temporarily take
down upstream connectivity in order to complete this maintenance.
We apologize for the short notice, but this configuration must be completed
as soon as possible.
During this window, a maximum of 15 minutes of network interruption may be
experienced. Though the potential for extended downtime exists, XIOLINK and
Kyvon have carefully designed a plan for implementation of
the new configuration, and will do everything to ensure that you and your
customers feel as little impact as possible. No changes to any customer
equipment will be necessary.
Duration: 2 Hours
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments via our online
support form or via phone at 314-544-0011.
Thank you,
Kyvon
Maintenance Notifications and Status Updates
In our efforts to constantly improve and maintain our infrastructure, Kyvon will be completing scheduled maintenance and upgrades in our data centers. To view a list of scheduled Maintenance Windows and status updates, visit our Network Issues page.
Maintenance Window Start Date & Time: 10/3/2012 2:30AM CST
Maintenance Window End Date & Time: 10/3/2012 3:00AM CST
Impact on Customers: No impact to customers.
Data Centers: 710 N Tucker. St. Louis / 1111 Olive St. Louis
Scope of Work: In our efforts to constantly improve and maintain all of our infrastructure, we will be adding a new fiber path between the St. Louis data centers. Although the potential for downtime exists, we have carefully designed a maintenance plan, and will do everything to ensure that you and your customers feel no impact. No changes to customer equipment will be necessary.
Duration: 30 Minutes
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments via our online support form or via phone at 314-544-0011.
Please note: Routine Data Center Maintenance is scheduled every Wednesday evening. Please check the Network Issues Page for exact Maintenance Window times.
Kyvon Support Team.
Kyvonators @ Warrior Dash Sept 29, 2012
We are participating in this fundraising event to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – and we are asking for your support to help us reach our goal.
New data center online!
Kyvon is proud to announce that we have a new data center online. It is located at 1111 Olive Street in downtown St. Louis Missouri. We will be expanding our cloud services to the new facility as well as offering rack space in this SSAE 16 compliant data center. Call us today to schedule a tour. 877-710-7993
Why bother virtualizing desktops at all?
Well, the primary reason why you might want to under take a desktop virtualization initiative is to centralize the management of your users’ desktops. While specifics depend on the selected model, the essential driver behind desktop virtualization in all of its forms is to enable user environments to be controlled and managed from a central point. This can simplify operational challenges such as asset management and patch management, and enables desktop policies to be more straightforwardly defined and implemented.

Appreciating Flexibility, Security and Availability
As well as improving the lot for IT managers, by breaking the bond between physical technologies and the applications that run on them, desktop virtualization can mean more flexibility for users. Depending on the selected virtualization options, users can be free to access applications and data wherever it’s most convenient to them, all the while taking their own configuration needs into account. For example:
✓ Accessing data and/or applications from which- ever computer is available, for example including running the work environment on a home PC or Internet kiosk.
✓ Running an application with specific configuration requirements, in parallel with other applications and operating systems without conflict between them.
✓ Provisioning and allocating applications more flexibly from a central point, or allowing users to provision applications for themselves on a self service basis.
In addition, a number of security benefits exist. Better control helps ensure user environments are as up to date (and therefore secure) as possible, as well as offering the opportunity to lock down the applications people can access, through application virtualization for example. Some desktop virtualization variants also build in security features such as encryption of both data and network communications, while permitting data to be held centrally for enhanced protection.

What about availability and business continuity benefits? Virtual desktop environments have a number of failover options to enable business users to keep working should something go wrong. For example, in the case of user state virtualization, if a local desktop or even the entire office fails, users can access their work from other (appropriately configured) machines, including from home. Meanwhile, some desktop virtualization approaches offer the ability to take ‘snapshots’ of virtual machines which can be backed up and stored in case of system failure.
It’s not as straightforward as saying ‘desktop virtualization will save you money’, but it certainly gives you more options when you come to deciding how that money might be spent either by reducing operational budgets in terms of minimized downtime, or lowering management and support overheads, or potentially enabling capital expenditure to be reduced or deferred. Equally, higher levels of flexibility and availability can lead to productivity gains which are valuable, even if they can be difficult to quantify. Of course, you need to weigh such factors against the capital costs of investing in desktop virtualization in the first place.
Desktop virtualization is a means to an end to enable business users to access the applications and services they need in the most efficient manner, both for them selves and the IT department. If implemented correctly, desktop virtualization is one of those ideas in IT that represents a genuine win/win for both IT and users, because both sides stand to gain from the effective delivery of desktop services.
Desktop Virtualization For Dummies®. Published by. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The Atrium. Southern Gate
Call Kyvon today to see how desktop virtualization can benefit your company. 877-710-7993
Kyvonators @ Ruckus Run 2012
Check out the Kyvonators in action at the 2012 Ruckus Run. View all the photos @ https://www.facebook.com/kyvonstl
Great jobs boys you ran a great race with Dave L. leading the pack. Video from the Locheed head cam coming soon.
Postini Release Update – February 2011
Google Message Continuity: Support for Microsoft® Exchange 2010
New Technical Support Phone Numbers
Update on the New IP Lock Batch Commands
Reporting Improvements
Postini Security Central
Upcoming Changes to Google Web Security Categories
Google Message Continuity: Support for Microsoft® Exchange 2010
With the upcoming release on February 22, Google Message Continuity will support Gmail synchronization with Microsoft® Exchange 2010. To learn more about using Google Message Continuity as a disaster recovery solution for your Exchange server, see the Google Message Continuity website and the Help Center.
New Technical Support Phone Numbers
Please note the following new telephone numbers for reaching Postini Technical Support:
877-355-5787 – Toll-free in North America
404-978-9282
These new phone numbers serve all of Google Enterprise Support, which includes Postini Customer Care. To reach Postini, dial 1 for Google Apps & Postini, and then dial 2 for Postini.
Postini’s old Support telephone numbers will remain active temporarily but will be replaced by the above numbers in the near future.
Premier Customers and Customers on System 200/201: Please continue to use the phone numbers listed in the Contact Us section of the Postini Support Portal.
Update on the New IP Lock Batch Commands
Postini is phasing out the existing IP Lock-related commands (for example, addallowedips, clearallowedips, and deleteallowedips) and replacing them with a new family of commands for IP Lock (shown below). Click the following links to the Message Security Batch Reference Guide for detailed instructions on using these new commands — including descriptions, syntax, and examples for each:
iplock add_range
iplock delete
iplock delete_range
iplock display
iplock set_disposition
We encourage you to begin using these new commands today. The old IP Lock batch commands will be phased out and no longer available by mid-March 2011.
Note that IP Lock can be set up only at the email config level.
Reporting Improvements
From January 2011 and through February 2011, the reporting engine that generates reports in the Administration Console is being upgraded. The Report interface remains the same, and most administrators won’t notice any differences in the reports. However, this engine update will facilitate a number of enhancements to the Message Security reporting during 2011, including earlier daily report availability, faster report retrieval, better precision for some reports, and the ability to add new reporting features more quickly.
Postini Security Central
Postini recently launched its new one-stop site for security-related best practices, important updates, helpful tools, and FAQs — Postini Security Central.
Using feedback from customers, we’ve designed Security Central so you can quickly find the resources and information you need during spam and virus outbreaks. We’ll also post information about new features as well as spam and virus trends to help you stay informed. We welcome any suggestions or feedback you may have on this new site.
Go to Postini Security Central.
Upcoming Changes to Google Web Security Categories
With the upcoming release on February 27, Google Web Security will add 29 new web filtering categories, including Social Networking, Streaming Video, Internet Telephony, Peer File Transfer, and Lotteries. The additional web filtering categories will increase the total number of categories to 79. During this update, the names of many of the existing categories will also be changed.
For more details about the new categories, see the Google Web Security for Enterprise Administration Guide at the time of the release.
Apps Status Dashboard and the Postini Known Issues Page
For the current status and important updates on critical system issues that may be affecting Postini, please see the Apps Status Dashboard. The dashboard offers a single location for the latest service status and options for RSS feeds. This replaces the current Postini traffic lights (which will be phased out in 2011) and provides more accurate and in-depth information.
Formerly the “Postini Current Status” page, the Known Issues page in the Help Center provides a list of known issues, fixed issues, and system maintenances for Postini Services.
Email Subscriptions
You can manage your subscriptions to Postini Customer Care emails by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer below, and entering your email address.
Sincerely,
Postini Customer Care
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