Blue Ridge Technology

50% of Phishing Attempts Impersonate Microsoft The old advice is still true: don’t trust anything you see on the internet. Within reason, of course: we work hard to make sure this blog is fact-based and trustworthy. But the big-picture advice is still good advice: how can you know for sure our team wrote this and that the whole post isn’t just the figment of a genAI’s imagination? There are signs, like the way this introduction is going. (Not your standard opening, that’s for sure!) So what’s our point? While you can learn a lot online, and you rely on it for a massive slice of your business, you still can’t take everything you see at face value. A recent report looked at a huge number of phishing attempts — those fraudulent emails that pretend to be from someone else and try to get you to give up sensitive information — and found that one company was the undisputed “leader”: more than ⅓ of phishing emails impersonating a brand chose Microsoft. If your business does business with Micr...

Heads up: there’s another security threat that could be lurking around your business. And even though it’s almost Christmas, today we’re talking about the undead — undead accounts , that is. Keep reading to learn about zombie accounts: what they are, how they come to be, and how they could threaten your business. Zombie Accounts: What Are They? Zombie accounts are network accounts (login credentials) that are active in your systems but that don’t belong to any current user. We call them “zombie accounts” because they're, well, undead. Like TV zombies, they should be dead, but no one went and made sure they really were dead. And now these accounts are bumbling around your network, just waiting for some enterprising bad guy to come along, resuscitate them, and find a way to hurt your business. Why Are Zombie Accounts a Thing? So far these zombie accounts sound like bad news, and they are. So why do they exist at all? Well, there are lots of ways to end up with zombie accounts, but b...