Security Updates - Q3 2024

This is a companion blog post to an email that went out to our managed clients September of 2024.

If you're reading this, thanks for stopping by and being interested in our decision making around our cybersecurity tools. You are then probably wondering what was Apt Interactive doing before and why did they decide to roll out new and enhanced services?

Let’s start with email. 

For several years now, we’ve relied on both Google and Microsoft to help us in the battle against phishing and other email based attacks. Both systems have “protection” built in so why should we need to involve a 3rd party? The top reasons are: 1. Compatibility with 3rd party email clients (Spark, Mailbird, etc.), You can not report phishing to Microsoft outside the Outlook client. 2. Focus. Both Google and Microsoft are focused on delivering email products as a whole and are not laser focused on cybersecurity. 3. Variety. Both of the big players are just that, big players. As a result, they can be slow to respond and adapt to changes in the threat landscape. 4. Speed. Using a security system that works across both Google and Microsoft allows our technicians to be better trained and respond to issues faster in a single tool rather than having to adapt to the ever changing backends of the big email systems. 5. Increased volume. Over the last 6 months we’ve seen a greater and greater number of phishing emails make it through the included protections of both big email systems. 

Moving on to Endpoint Security. As many of you know, we moved to what we refer to as either Zero Trust or Allowlisting on all managed endpoints during the summer of ‘23. That was our single greatest change we’ve made to customer security since we launched managed services nearly 8 years ago. We caught several things running in environments that shouldn’t have been and uncovered lots of undocumented processes causing small issues in environments. Let’s use a hypothetical to describe how Allowlisting protects environments and the gap present we’re fixing today. 

John at John’s Lawyers PC wants to install Zoom for an upcoming meeting. He clicks the link in the calendar invite email that downloads what he suspects is the Zoom client. When he wants to install it an install request pops up and he sends a request to Apt Interactive. Jane at Apt Interactive sees the request and approves the install. John retries the install and his computer is immediately locked with ransomware. It turns out Jane is a Jr Technician and the software in John’s email invite was ransomware disguised as Zoom and it fooled our technician doing the approval. How should Apt Interactive protect clients against human error? Well with multilayered security software of course! In this example John was on vacation until today but all of his colleagues' computers got the new security, EDR, addon from Apt Interactive. The ransomware was only able to affect John’s computer and not jump to his colleagues' computers over the network or infect their servers. We also have a backup of John’s computer from before he left the office, and restored his computer that afternoon. In this multilayered approach, even when social engineering and human error let in malicious software, we were able to contain the threat and remove it in a timely manner with no downtime to the rest of the company. 

“Didn’t you mention new plans from Apt Interactive making this less of a headache to keep track of?” Thanks for bringing that up, I sure did. Managed service from Apt Interactive will soon be divided into three categories. 

• Time and Materials (clearer designation) 

This will be the simplest way to interact with us. Just like a plumber, we’ll bill you for the time it takes and supplies used. We’re unlikely to have a way to remotely support clients that want to work this way. 

• Flex (new name)

This is the a la carte Managed Services offerings you know now. All software and services are listed separately (i.e. M365, Phone System, EPS, Backup). Customers can pick and choose a level of support they need or feel comfortable with. 

• Umbrella (New)   

This is the new meat and potatoes plan so to speak. It is priced per user per location and includes almost all of the minimum protections to qualify for a cyber insurance policy or Cyber Warranty. EPS, NPS, Endpoint Backup, Business Email, Email Protection, Email Backup, Phone System User, and a company wide Cyber Warranty up to $500k are all included in this plan. 

If you are a retail or trade business with employees that don’t touch computers or emails, they can be named but won’t be accounted for in the billing since they pose little to no cybersecurity risk.

Thanks again for stopping by and reading through our reasoning on keeping our clients safe and secure. 

Jacob Bespalec

CEO | Apt Interactive