Firewalls:

Our experts will configure your hardware firewall to insure no packets get onto your network without authorization. It will manage your hours of operation, allow VPN access to key personnel and insure your network remains accessible to authorized remote users and your server available on the Internet. We recommend two or more separate Internet providers with no single point of failure. The firewall will use fail-over so if one provider’s connection fails your business is not impacted. Performance is enhanced with dual web connections with load balancing. Both connections are utilized increasing your bandwidth. There are many benefits from investing in a hardware firewall and out experts will insure you get the most from your investment.

Social Engineering Exploits:

Phishing, clickjacking and other exploits will attempt to trick your staff into downloading malicious software. Click-jacking exploits can disguise a link as something beneficial to trick you into downloading hidden malware. Spoofing an email address you know from a hacked contact list can trick users into trusting a download infected with malware. There are dozens of tricks to entice your users to click on a link or even just click on the email itself if your email client, like Outlook,  is configured to show a preview of the email. Bot-herders infect your computers this way and spread within your network via a worm or Trojan until at a predetermined time, or by remote command, your computers begin sending tens of thousands of spam emails for the bot herder’s clients. Most web hosting firms will close your account immediately pending an investigation into the spamming. If you depend on your website, this could be devastating. With a combination of the proper anti-malware, software and other software employed for security such as sandboxing software which allows you to open risky software or run dubious code in a quarantined environment. We frustrate even the most advanced hackers. Added to our network intrusion and packet analysis software and a properly configured firewall your network is secure. We include seminars on the dangers as well as provide easy to understand, but very effective, documents to alert your staff to the dangers. We also email all our clients with bulletins for dangerous new exploits that are spreading across commercial networks. At Circropolis security is taken very seriously.

Rootkits Stegomalware and Obfuscation

As anti-malware software improves hackers and malicious code developers are engineering malware that employs many different ways to avoid detection. If the malware can hide, then even the best anti-virus software can’t neutralize it. Rootkits are in this family and have been around a long time. They consist of a payload of malicious code bundled with software to keep the malware from discovery. There are a few ways a rootkit can interfere with and hide from your anti-virus software.

A newer sophisticated malware that also is in the obfuscation family is stegomalware. Hiding within other files, running its code only under certain conditions are examples of the behavior of this slippery malware. The well known Trojan can trick your users into clicking a link to acquire a benign, helpful file or app. The payload of a Trojan can include very damaging malware such as spyware. Spyware, such as key loggers, can be super-destructive. Logging every keystroke of the user will create a huge file of your keystrokes which is later filtered to seek specific patterns such as four digits followed by a space four times. That is a common filter to find credit card numbers. If you have a master password or chain saving all your usernames and passwords under one encrypted password for convenience, you have a prime target for malware. Capturing the encrypted password file and using your password stolen by the keylogger will compromise every app, site or link for which you have saved the credentials under a master-password.
Indeed many little conveniences popping up may not be worth the convenience if you know the risk. Using Google or Facebook, for example, to log into websites allows Google or Facebook not only to track you while your have their websites loaded, but enables them to track you if you have the third-party app loaded using Google or Facebook.
Our blog is being redesigned and will soon publish informative blogs and articles regarding best practices for many of the new products and services appearing regularly. Read our software recommendations such as for Process Explorer. An excellent tool that can allow you to delete self-replicating malware that evades anti-virus and user deletions by breaking up into several parts with each part capable of immediately replicating any part that was deleted. Process Explorer allows the user to suspend the parts one at a time. That doesn’t trigger replication. When all parts of suspended, they can be deleted or quarantined.
Our security specialists train constantly, keeping abreast of all developing security issues so you can focus on your business in safe digital environment. 

Full spectrum security software:

There are many choices for basic security software. We recommend Eset, a provider of excellent anti-malware protection that has consistently proven the best in independent tests. It has low CPU overhead, works unobtrusively in the background without slowing performance. It allows for consolidated network administration via their Endpoint Administration Portal. The software updates the virus signature as many times as new threats are identified, sometimes updating multiple times in an hour. In addition to basic anti-virus it allows for granular web access configuration blocking risky websites, per PC or user group and global settings. Another useful function is the device control settings which can restrict using DVD/CD burners as well as flash-drives and external drives. This is critical to prevent users from copying sensitive files onto removable media for unauthorized distribution. It’s networking tools, ‘in the wild’ instant file submission settings for suspicious or unknown files. They are sent to Eset for analysis providing protection for you and all their clients collectively. Each setting is totally configurable by the user. These and many more features make Eset, in our opinion, the best stand alone anti-malware software for home and small business applications.

Effective Rapid Disaster Recovery Plan

Different data recovery plans are appropriate for different clients but our approach doesn’t vary. It is a fully inclusive plan we formulate to cover any eventuality. You cannot predict what type of loss can occur. It’s not only software or hardware failures but fire, water damage, malware and electrical surges are a few examples of issues that can cause data lose. If you protect your data only, the loss of configurations for switches, firewalls, servers, can prevent the timely restoration of your network. Data must be accessible to be useful. In addition to standard backups for important data, we maintain current configuration files for devices like switches and firewalls to enable installing a new device and simply uploading the config file. That can take a few minutes. Configuring a firewall manually out of the box without the config file, could take all day! Finally, to protect against a catastropic system-wide failure, we move all, or as much as practical, of your data onto virtual machines. This is seamless to your users. But by duplicating off-site virtual machines with replication, even if the entire building were to have burnt down, your computer network is intact. It’s all safely sitting on VM’s elsewhere waiting for you to move them to your old location, or simply log into them from any web connection. We maintain hardware devices that can be used in hardware failures or other disruptions. By utilizing the same few firewall models, for example SonicWall NSA series, we maintain extra units that can be raced to any clients location with their configuration file already uploaded. In this way a motherboard or other hardware failure for a network stress point, such as a firewall or switch, will cause no more than an hours downtime. If you budget allows; we recommend the ‘high availability’ option for your firewalls and switches. In this scenario, each device has a twin. both are ‘on’ and configurations are replicated to both. However one remains ‘active’ the other in ‘standby’ mode. The fail-over, should it ever happen, is seamless. As the active firewall fails, traffic is routed to the backup. Email and other alerts are sent to the administrator and the failed device is forensically examined. Your network was hit with a major failure at what is normally a ‘choke point’ in your network, yet your users were not aware of any issues at all. That is our version of a good Disaster Recovery Plan- when you only learn of the ‘disaster’ after it has passed.