College and university business and financial offices are busy collecting student data and processing credit card payments for everything—from tuition to residence fees. University human resource departments regularly use employees direct deposit and health insurance data. This stockpile of sensitive payment and personally identifiable student information, coupled with limited IT resources, makes schools a playground for cyber criminals.  In fact, in 2016, education surpassed healthcare as the sector most targeted by ransomware, the fastest growing cybercrime today.

Ransomware outbreaks, including Petya and WannaCry, cost businesses $1 billion in 2016. Even so, school administrators—even some IT professionals—have a false sense of security in their Mac-heavy environments, with usage rates of 70 percent in K-12 and 80 percent in higher ed.

While Macs are perceived as being “safe” from malware, Mac’s small market share may largely be the reason for fewer attacks, rather than the vulnerability level of the Mac OS X. In fact, attacks on Macs were up 744 percent in 2016.

Ransomware is Getting Smarter

Ransomware doesn’t require entry to the MacOS operating system, not even special privileges. It just needs to target personal files stored in the user’s home directory. Hackers target unsuspecting users with malicious downloads launched from email and social media platforms. If they connect to your network, all it takes is a network vulnerability for the ransomware to take hold.

Hackers are creating new malware that runs on multiple platforms. They’re also scaling up attacks through ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS)—pre-configured ransomware packages offered to “franchisees” in exchange for a cut of the ransom money. FortiGuard Labs recently discovered an RaaS that uses a web portal hosted in a TOR network, possibly the first attack on a non-Windows operating system and the first RaaS to target MacOS.

Education is Your Best Defense

While Mac-specific ransomware attacks haven’t hit the level of Windows occurrences, the risks— the encryption of files to prevent access—are equally serious. To avoid them, schools should:

1. Patch early and often. Pay close attention to Apple’s security updates and apply all patches quickly.
2. Backup devices. Use Apple’s Time Machine service to make redundant backups, storing the most critical information offline. Scan backups for vulnerabilities
3. Encrypt data stored on devices. While this may not be effective against many ransomware variants, it can protect against malware that is designed to steal files and data.
4. Install an endpoint security client. Carefully research security vendors to assure their solutions will protect devices and tie that security back into your network security strategy, allowing you to leverage and share threat intelligence.
5. Cover all threat vectors. Email is still the biggest vehicle for transmitting ransomware, so deploy an appropriate email security solution, along with web security tools, wired and wireless access controls, cloud-based security, and network segmentation to detect, respond to and contain threats found anywhere in your distributed environment.

Ransomware is evolving, and educational institutions can’t afford to be lax. As a value-added distributor of the Fortinet Security Fabric, Fine Tec can help you ensure that your educational customers are aware of ransomware risks to Macs and have a plan in place to counter them. Contact us to learn more.

Earlier this summer, Gartner named Fortinet’s unified threat management (UTM) solution a Magic Quadrant leader for the eighth year in a row. This news presents a valuable opportunity for SMBs seeking a less complex, more scalable security approach.

According to a Fortinet press release, Gartner recognized Fortinet for its “completeness of vision” and “ability to execute on that vision.” Fortinet’s FortiGate UTM is positioned in the highest ranks for its capacity to execute, feature/price/ performance combination and its perennial presence on SMB shortlists. In fact, Gartner says Fortinet is the most frequently shortlisted vendor for SMB and distributed office use cases among all competitors.

It’s no surprise, as Fortinet’s UTM pairs the most advanced security technology on the market with easy management and control required by today’s SMB and distributed office environments. Based on the industry-leading FortiOS operating system, Fortinet’s FortiGate UTM combines the security and feature sets of Fortinet’s FortiGate firewall, FortiAP wireless access points and FortiSwitches into a single, easy-to-manage compact appliance that offers:

• Advanced security, including enterprise firewall, intrusion protection system (IPS), virtual private network (VPN) inspection, web application firewall (WAF), SSL inspection and cloud-based sandboxing.
• Performance networking, handling routing, load balancing, WAN optimization, 3G/4G connectivity and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

With Fortinet’s UTM, SMB customers have the enterprise-grade networking and security features they require without the enterprise-grade headaches that come with managing complex, multi-vendor point solutions.

SMB Cybersecurity Challenges

The need for robust UTM protection exists because SMBs are being targeted by attackers who know smaller companies have the same type of lucrative data (banking information, personal data, social security numbers, etc.) as larger organizations but are often far easier to infiltrate. Not only do SMBs have fewer staffing and resources than their larger counterparts, but attacks on SMBs are also likely to have more dire consequences; the National Cyber Security Alliance finds that 60% of small companies go completely out of business within six months of suffering a cyberattack.

Gartner’s validation of Fortinet makes the UTM purchase decision easier for SMBs searching for a tried-and-true security solution that is both feature-rich and easy to deploy/manage. Built on Fortinet’s industry-leading security and networking expertise, the FortiGate UTM offers a more powerful, scalable UTM with the added advantage of Fortinet’s Security Fabric approach. Since each tool in Fortinet’s Security Fabric, including its UTM, can dynamically share threat intelligence and coordinate response SMBs can identify, thwart and mitigate security attacks faster and more accurately—even as their business and networks become more complex.

With Fortinet in their corner, SMBs are ready to face even the most advanced, persistent and sophisticated attacks without having to over-tax their staff—or their budgets. As a value-added distributor of Fortinet solutions, Fine Tec can help you deliver to your SMB customers the advantages of a simpler, more scalable security architecture with the award-winning security and performance capabilities provided by the Fortinet UTM solution. Learn more.

SMBs are moving to the cloud in droves, with a recent Techaisle survey finding that 94 percent expect to be using some type of software-as-a-service (SaaS) application by year’s end. While those SMBs that move to the cloud are poised to reap several benefits, from costs savings to scalability, they are also opening themselves up to a new range of cyberattacks that threaten to put those benefits – and their company as a whole – at risk. Fortunately, Fortinet has extended its SMB-focused unified threat management platform (UTM) to the cloud, ensuring that your SMB customers can fully protect their SaaS workloads with industry-leading SaaS-ready security.

SAAS on the Rise

Drilling down into the Techaisle numbers further, it becomes readily apparent that many SMBs are becoming cloud-first organizations, with small businesses expecting a 140 percent increase in SaaS usage and mid-market firms increasing their number of SaaS applications by 80 percent. The move makes sense because the cloud is designed specifically to offload the time- and resource-intensive tasks few SMBs can handle in-house while providing the on-demand infrastructure and scalability a growing business needs.

Consequently, many new SMB converts to SaaS are implementing business-critical SaaS apps, including:

• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Supply chain management
• Inventory management
• Marketing automation
• Customer service

The result is an always-on business in which even far-flung employees and small offices can access enterprise-grade business applications anytime, anywhere.

SMBs Under Fire

All that flexibility, however, comes with a price. As more SMBs put more mission-critical data in the cloud, they also find that they are increasingly targeted by attackers looking for fast, easy scores. In fact, Verizon’s latest Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR) found that attacks on small businesses are on the rise, with 61 percent of all victims that reported a breach last year having fewer than 1,000 employees.

In the past, SMBs could provide their organizations with baseline security using UTM appliances strategically located throughout their environments. Such UTM wares offered SMBs the best of both worlds: strong, flexible networking and security in an easy-to-manage and deploy form factor. But with the move to the cloud, all bets are off as on-premises security solutions no longer have the access or visibility into critical cloud-based workloads.

Cloud-Ready Security

Enter Fortinet’s FortiGate UTM. Fortinet recently expanded its FortiCloud management solution to encompass its FortiGate UTMs, the SMB-focused all-in-one security solution that Gartner just named a Magic Quadrant leader in the space for the eighth year in a row.

The move means SMB customers using FortiGate UTM appliances can now deploy, manage and service their entire security and networking posture from a single pane of glass using Fortinet’s innovative Security Fabric architecture. Fortinet’s fabric uniquely enables all security and network tools to work together in concert to identify, mitigate and stop all manner of attacks in real time, no matter where they occur, on-premises or the cloud.

As a value-added distributor of Fortinet solutions, Fine Tec can help you deliver the advantages of UTM simplicity in the cloud. Learn more.

In 93% of data breaches reported within Verizon’s latest Data Breach Investigations Report, compromise occurred in minutes or less, and the average malware hash was visible for only 58 seconds. These scary stats just go to show that hackers are faster and more sophisticated than ever, armed with threats and attacks that leave traditional, reactive security tools in the dust. To even the playing field, enterprises need to deploy faster, more intelligent defense tactics – strategies built with intelligent security automation at its core.

Network Complexity Creates Complex, Security Challenges

Just as hackers are becoming more sophisticated, enterprise networks are becoming more complex. The days of a single data center supporting employees bound to their desktops are over. More companies are:

• Going mobile, with IDC expecting mobile workers to account for 72.3% of the total U.S. workforce by 2020.
• Using public cloud services, with Gartner projecting the market for public cloud to hit $318 billion by 2019.
• Deploying Internet-of-Things (IoT) initiatives, with Gartner forecasting the number of IoT devices to reach 20 billion by 2020, the majority of which will not only be connected wirelessly, but also be “headless,” with no security capabilities at all.

To manage all this complexity and keep data secure requires a complete rethink of security. You can’t rely on reactive, siloed, signature-based solutions to detect attacks amid the ever-evolving threat landscape.

In today’s complex world, you need security that’s comprehensive, intelligent and automated to identify and proactively thwart attacks before they wreak havoc on your network. But getting there isn’t easy. It requires three primary building blocks:

1. Intelligence: The ability to process and store huge amounts of data gathered from every point across the distributed network — from data center to cloud and back again.
2. Wisdom: The ability to know what to do with all that intelligence; for instance, what does it tell you about your environment and how it’s changing? End-to-end visibility is a key prerequisite. You can’t know what you can’t see.
3. Automation: The ability to take action on that wisdom, automatically and proactively, to stop attacks before they can even get started. After all, fast attacks require even faster response.

With intelligent security automation, security is built directly into the network to ensure every component acts together to gather intelligence, hone wisdom and proactively and automatically respond to security events. It sounds like a futuristic proposal, but our partner Fortinet actually addresses all these building blocks in its Security Fabric architecture.

Fortinet Security Fabric Paves Way to Intelligent Security Automation

With the Fortinet Security Fabric,

every security component in your network – across data center, mobile, IoT and even the cloud – is woven together in on one comprehensive, scalable, API-based fabric. Each component is able to communicate and collaborate with all others, no matter where they are, how they communicate, or most importantly, what vendor they come from.

Together, the fabric provides a single end-to-end view of your entire network, enabling you to fully understand the threats you face while automating the best response.

As a value-added distributor of Fortinet solutions, Fine Tec can help you guide customers on a successful path to intelligent security automation. Learn more.