Data Net Blog

We know that living in a constant state of fear of being scammed is not ideal, but it’s the unfortunate reality of living in today’s technologically advanced world. The good news is that it’s never too late to learn how to avoid them! Let’s discuss how you can be more aware of the challenges of scams not only in a business setting, but in everyday life.

2023 was quite the year, especially where AI is concerned. The technology became the center of attention in the business world and in the public. What does this mean for AI, and how has this technology changed the way we do business, for better or worse? Let’s dive in.

Many individuals are concerned about the future of AI, including the White House, which encouraged companies like Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI to commit to helping with the management of artificial intelligence. Other companies, including Adobe, Cohere, IBM, Nvidia, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI, and Stability, have joined in this pledge to maintain “the development of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI,” according to the White House.

A major nonprofit has disclosed a major data breach that has affected 890 schools across the United States. The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) has announced that they have been the victim of a data breach that has put its clients’ data at risk. Let’s take a look at what this means.

Zero-day vulnerabilities are never fun, but this is especially the case with popular devices, like the many that use the Samsung Exynos modem. Google’s Project Zero has discovered 18 such vulnerabilities in these chips, four of which allow for remote code execution. Why should you be concerned about these vulnerabilities and what can you do to minimize your risk?

We make a consistent point to urge our readers to take their organizational cybersecurity seriously. This is because there are threats out there that are targeting your business, no matter how small it is. This week, we take a break from the itemized list of security tips to present 2022’s most devastating cyberattacks to give you an idea what hackers today can do.

While it may not be the first target one might think of when it comes to cyberattacks, a recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the Vatican’s official website only proves that cyberattacks can potentially influence any organization. Let’s consider the situation, as well as what lessons we can all take away from it.

Let me ask you a question: would you see The Mona Lisa, The Starry Night, or Girl with a Pearl Earring as the masterpieces they are considered today if they were actually created using artificial intelligence? While it might seem like a silly question, it is one that the results of the recent Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition—where the first-place winner was created using AI—leads us to ask.

Inflation continues to plague businesses in all sectors and industries, and it’s not letting up. This has led businesses to implement practices which allow them to get as much value out of their investments as possible, including technology. Let’s go over some of the ways you can achieve a responsible IT budget without breaking the bank in the process.

Continuing their record of the past few months, Cloudflare has stopped yet another DDoS attack—this time, one of record-breaking severity. According to the company, this attack—specifically, an HTTPS DDoS attack—was the largest one ever recorded.

Let’s explore what this kind of attack is in the context of what happened, and what you can do to help keep your business safe.

Unless you live under a rock and somehow missed it, Facebook experienced an outage, an inconvenience that kept users from accessing its services all over the world. Perhaps to your surprise, the real ramifications of this outage have nothing to do with people not being able to share pictures of their cats or yell at each other in the comments.

The week of June 14th, 2021 saw many applications and websites suffer from outages. This, consequently, created considerable problems for many organizations that used these services. Businesses suffered from continuity issues, but perhaps the biggest takeaway is just how vulnerable the Internet really is to these kinds of issues. What happened, exactly?

Ransomware attacks are nothing new, but when was the last time they made headlines by instigating a gas crisis? A Russia-backed hacking collective called DarkSide targeted Colonial Pipeline, a company responsible for almost 45 percent of the fuel for the Southeastern United States, with a devastating ransomware attack. The attack led to a spike in fuel prices and spotty availability while also showing cracks in the nation’s energy infrastructure, and it has even sparked a renewed interest in cybersecurity.

We spend a lot of time on this blog discussing cybersecurity. Understanding the effects of full-scale cybersecurity attacks is useful, but will only motivate a person or business to do things that will work to keep their network secure. The problem is that when it comes to public computing resources, there isn’t enough being done.