Employees are routinely cautioned not to leave their work laptops unattended or use unsecured Wi-Fi networks when they travel for business, but a new threat is cropping up where employees may least expect it: ride-sharing applications.
Specifically, a Kaspersky Lab security review finds that of 13 international ride-sharing apps, all revealed several security problems. Researchers say that vulnerabilities include users being re-routed through an attacker’s site, allowing that person access to personal data such as passwords or logins. In addition, a lack of defense against reverse-engineering can give hackers knowledge about how the app works and then find a vulnerability that gives them access to server-side infrastructure.
The scope of the problem is considerable: The 13 ride-sharing apps that were studied have been downloaded more than one million times, Google Play reports.
Norton Security has identified even more security concerns. Users of Lyft and Uber use their smartphones, which come with GPS, to locate one another. But if the users don’t turn off the app after reaching their destination, the app can continue to track and collect data on the user – perhaps even how long the person remains at a certain location.
Victor Chebyshev, security expert at Kapersky, says that research shows ride-sharing apps aren’t ready to fight off malware attacks. “Cybercriminals understand the value that such apps hold, and existing offers on the black-market point to the fact that vendors do not have much time to remove the vulnerabilities,” he says.
Currently, Uber is still in legal hot water over a massive 2016 data breach, with lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in damages. After that breach, the company paid hackers $100,000 to delete the information and keep it quiet. Several top security officials at Uber later lost their jobs.
While there are continuing revelations about security breaches with ride-sharing apps, companies need to ensure that their employees are educated about how to keep bad actors from accessing their personal or company information through such pathways.
Some recommendations to keep data safe from hackers includes:
- Disconnect. If a car sharing service sends an employee an SMS with a PIN code for his account, that worker should contact the security service and remove his bank card from that account. In addition, employees should use a separate bank card for online payments, including car sharing.
- Stay up-to-date. Remind workers to use the latest operating system on a device to cut down on software vulnerabilities and improve the odds of keeping a device free from attacks.
- Do the homework. Employees may spend more time researching where to eat dinner than if an app is secure. Urge them to research reviews of the app and the company before downloading and to be aware of any potential pitfalls.
- Read the privacy app. Not usually a fun chore, but an important one. Educate workers that their lack of knowledge about an app can come back to haunt them and the company. If there’s anything that doesn’t sound right, advise them to avoid the app or seek additional advice from security experts.
Just as more employees are becoming aware of the dangers of unsecured passwords and phishing attacks, they need to know that when they use certain apps, criminals may be trying to come along for the ride.
Great security starts with a great data back-up and recovery plan delivered by a trusted, data recovery pro. Contact StorageCraft today to learn more about all the solutions we offer and how we can help you secure your data.
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Yes, a span size of two means that each span is as small as possible. So a span size of two in RAID 100 means that you are actually getting RAID 10 without anything extra (it is the middle RAID 0 that is eliminated.) So the advice is good, basically you always want a span size of two if the option exists. Some controllers cannot handle a RAID 10 large enough to accommodate all attached drives and so larger spans are required. Typically this does not happen until you have at least ~18 drives or so.
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The one question I have coming out of this results from the conversation that I believe possibly prompted this blog post, namely that in this thread on SpiceWorks:
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/548896-raid-10-2-spans-a-cautionary-tale-it-can-happen-to-you
The recommendation/default for at least one DELL controller model was a span-size of 2, with comments referring to this being referred to as the optimal configuration for larger arrays. Is there any evidence to support this being the optimal configuration? Your blog post, and my (albeit limited) understanding of RAID would suggest that this advice is flawed. Then again, maybe I am misunderstanding something at a fundamental level?
Furthermore, would there be any benefit to adding in multiple RAID-0 layers above the RAID-100 so that the member size of all arrays involved is kept as small as possible?
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I like the article, to be honest I've seen many posts on newspapers, magazines and even blogs that praises the open-source as it without being put on glory or hell, just neutral
I'll like to add some other software like Thunderbird (for email), Git (for developers) and maybe replace Notepad++ with Geany/Gedit/Kate (or the text editor of your preference, yours being the Notepad); otherwise I like your choices and those are apps that I use a lot, even if in my workplace they don't want to replace it
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I have over 100 VHS tapes to discard. Are they recyclable?/
What to do with them? Dom -
Hey Dom, depending on where you're located there are a number of ways you can dispose of VHS tapes. Most thrift shops will take them off your hands, assuming they're actual movies and not simply blank tapes. Another option is to use Greendisk (greendisk.com), which allows you to mail in your old VHS tapes for recycling. Beyond that, there may be some options specific to your location (there are waste recycling facilities that can handle this type of trash all over), a quick Google search might reveal some of them.
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Hi there, I think your web site may be having internet browser compatibility problems.
Whenever I look at your web site in Safari, it looks fine
however when opening in I.E., it has some overlapping issues.
I simply wanted to provide you with a quick heads up!
Besides that, wonderful site! -
Thanks for letting us know, we really appreciate it. Do you happen to know which version of IE you're using? I know that sometimes the older versions don't cooperate. I can't seem to reproduce the results you're seeing, but we're looking into it. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.
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I think you are missing the point entirely here. I have a home with 5 PCs all running same Windows OS version and same versions of Office. MOST of the file data on the machines are copies of same files on other machines: the Windows OS files and Office binaries. I want to backup full system snapshot images (not just photos and music) daily to a NAS on my LAN, or even a headless Windows machine acting as a NAS (like the old Windows Home Server product). I want the bandwidth savings of laptops backing up over wifi to notice that those windows files are already stored and not transmit them over wifi. I also want the total NAS storage of all combined backups reduced so that I can copy the NAS storage to either external drive for offsite storage, or more interesting up to the cloud for redundancy. ISP bandwidth caps, limited upstream bandwidth, and cloud storage annual cost per GB mean that deduplicated backup storage is essential. The cost of additional local storage is NOT the only consideration.
I don't care about Windows Server's integrated deduplication. The deduplication has to be part of the backup system itself, especially if you are doing cluster or sector level deduplication, to avoid sending the duplicate data over the wire to the data storage in the first place.
I've been looking at different backup solutions to replace Windows Home Server (a decade-old product that offered deduplication), and your product looked very interesting, but unfortunately the lack of built-in deduplication rules it out for me. I can only imagine how this affects 100-desktop customers when I wont't even consider it for 5-desktop home use.
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Thank you for your comments. We appreciate all points of view on this topic.
I agree that ISP bandwidth caps, limited upstream bandwidth, and cloud storage cost per GB show how critical it is to minimize data transmissions offsite. I also believe that much like modems and BETA video tapes, the bandwidth of today is giving way to higher access everywhere. For example, Google Fiber is now available to some of my peers at the office. Cellular LTE and satellite technologies are also increasing bandwidth for small business and home offices. At the same time, our data consumption and data creation is increasing at a rate that may outpace this increased supply of bandwidth. Either way, there are ways to work around data transmission limits.
One way we help with data transmission over slower networks is we incorporate WAN acceleration and bandwidth scheduling technologies into our offsite replication tools. These allow you to not only get the most efficient use of available bandwidth but to also schedule your data replication during off-peak hours. Another way we help with data transmission is through compression. Deduplication is after all simply another form of data compression which reduces the near side (source) data before it is transmitted over the wire (target).
In your case, you could use our product to store images on a local volume which has deduplication. You could then replicate data over the wire to offsite storage using ImageManager or some other tool. Many of our customers do this very thing.
Keep in mind that the deduplication process has to occur at some point: either at the source or at the target. If you wanted to deduplicate your 5 PCs you would be best served with a BDR solution that can read each of those PCs, see the duplicate files on each, and avoid copying those files to storage. In this example, deduplication would occur on your BDR but you're still reading data from each PC over the wire to your BDR. In addition, your BDR would control the index for data stored on a separate volume or perhaps has the storage volume incorporated in the BDR. This creates a single point of failure because if your BDR crashes then the backup images for your 5 PCs wouldn't be recoverable and current backup processes cease.
At StorageCraft we focus on the recovery. Our philosophy means that we take the smallest fastest backup images we can and then we give you ways to automatically test those images for reliability, compress them into daily/weekly/monthly files according to your retention policy, and replicate those images locally and offsite. This gives you a solid foundation from which to recover those images quickly to almost any new environment. I have yet to see a faster more reliable solution among our competitors.
Cheers,
Steven -
Regarding Shadowprotect desktop:
I am looking for the following capabilities
1. Windows 8.1 compatability
Everything I've examined says Win 8 but nothing about Win 8.1
2. I want to be able to do the following on an ACER S-3:
320gb hd with Win 8.1
create an image of the 320gb drive.
Install a 120gb drive in the ACER.
Install the image to the 120gb drive.
I am assuming that I can boot from the Shadowprotect
CD, use an external usb connected dock with the 320gb
image, and successfully install the image from the
external dock to restore to the 120gb drive installed in the ACER.
3. Does Shadowprotect take care of setting up the needed
partition and format for the target drive (120gb in this case)I've looked at several of the alternatives to your product
posing the same questions above and get vague or downright
misleading answers to my items 1, 2 AND 3 above.If I purchase your product will I be able to do what I
want as stated in items 1,2 and 3 above?I have done exactly what I described in items 1,2 and 3
above for WIN 7 using a product called EZGIG II and am
pleased with the results. I am looking for the same
capability for Win 8.1.Please avise,
Joe O'Loughlin -
Is the whitepaper still available? The link seems to be broken. Thanks!
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I just fixed that download link. Thanks for letting us know and enjoy the paper!
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Hello,
I'm just wondering if any of you have actually tested this scenario in the end and come to any conclusion since this article was published.
Thank you!
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VMware Player is not a Type 1 hypervisor, and therefore does not have better performance than Virtualbox "because it runs directly on the hardware."""