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Revolutionizing Security: Embracing PTaaS for Agile Risk Management and Maturing Security Programs

Organizations face constant threats to their information systems and data in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. Traditional quarterly pen testing, although valuable, may no longer be sufficient to safeguard against emerging vulnerabilities adequately. This article explores the concept of Pen Testing as a Service (PTaaS) imagined by the team at Xcape, Inc. , and its potential to revolutionize how organizations manage risk and strengthen their security programs. PTaaS offers a proactive and continuous approach to vulnerability management and risk mitigation by establishing a collaborative relationship between information security teams and IT leads. The Limitations of Traditional Quarterly Pen Testing: Traditional quarterly pen testing has been a staple in organizations' security strategies, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities and weaknesses. However, the rapidly changing threat landscape and evolving attack vectors render this periodic approach inadequate....

How can managed IT services benefit my business?

How a great MSP can make running your business, seem effortless. In today's digital era, businesses rely heavily on technology to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and stay competitive. However, managing complex IT systems and infrastructure can be challenging and time-consuming for organizations, especially those lacking in-house IT expertise. This is where Managed IT Services Providers (MSPs) like Xcape, Inc. , come into play. In this article, we will explore how partnering with an MSP in Los Angeles, CA, can benefit your business and propel it to new heights of success. Proactive IT Support and Maintenance: One of the primary advantages of Managed IT Services is the provision of proactive support and maintenance for your business's IT infrastructure. Rather than waiting for issues to arise, MSPs monitor your systems 24/7, identify potential problems, and resolve them before they impact your operations. This proactive approach ensures maximum uptime and minimizes...

Ensuring Cyber Insurance Coverage: The Crucial Role of Security Controls

In today's digital landscape, many business owners believe that obtaining a cyber insurance policy automatically guarantees protection. However, this assumption is far from reality. Even with general liability policies that cover cyber claims, organizations must meet specific minimum requirements to ensure their claims are approved. In fact, some insurance carriers may collaborate with cybersecurity partners to evaluate the implementation of security controls before determining coverage applicability. Xcape, Inc. can offer the guidance and expertise to ensure these security controls are implemented to strengthen your overall security posture. In addition, our Managed IT Provider Services implementation of the following security controls gives organizations quicker recovery in the event of a security incident so that our customers can get back to work in minutes and hours vs. days and weeks. Although often overlooked by insurance providers, your policy documents clearly outli...

Ever got hacked by your Anti Virus?

I just got the funniest call from a client, back story; we're doing a compliance audit for a customer. In doing so, we reviewed some security control integration, including integrating Slack notifications for failed attempts on network-attached devices. (This small detail is amusing in a second) Our client's Slack kept reporting a Windows machine brute forcing failed login attempts on different network devices. Well, in this land of Mac computers, just like with many Mac-only organizations, there's always the one accounting PC that runs the Windows-only accounting software. However, in this case, the one PC's AVG install was the culprit for all of the Slack alerts for failed login attempts from different devices on their network. Our client's head of IT needed clarification about why AVG was port scanning and brute-forcing his internal network and did some research to learn about AVG's Traffic Inspector Tool , only to find out that it is indeed its intended fu...

Have you tested your backup recently?

We're in the business of helping people, so when a business owner reached out for assistance during a ransomware attack they had experienced, our first question was, "When was your most recent backup?" The owner said his CTO assured him they backed up their Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Well, they had one snapshot from several years ago, which wouldn't do anything for them. Of course, we always feel bad for giving business owners awful news. But, sometimes, even as experts without the absolute minimum being done technically, we're only left with a few options in ways we can help. So we reversed-engineered and created a decryption application based on the ransomware sample we recovered during our investigation. Recovering over 3 TB of data in the process. While that's not always a possibility, in this case, many things went right for us during the investigation. Is there a better way to handle ransomware attack recovery ? YES! But the issue wasn't t...

How secure is your SMB's domain name?

Studies show that small businesses are being targeted now more than ever in cyber attacks. ( Forbes: Small Businesses Are More Frequent Targets Of Cyberattacks Than Larger Companies ) When cybersecurity professionals discuss two-factor authentication, domain registrars or DNS hijacking is often not the topic. (Think 2FA for GoDaddy , NameCheap , and SquareSpace , to name a few. Take a moment and use these links to setup 2fa for your domain, or google "How to turn on 2fa for name of provider .") Surprisingly, even in 2023, some providers still don't support this essential security control. However, your domain name controls an organization's corporate website and email exchange records. And suppose an attacker were to get control of it. In that case, they could recreate your email addresses, and password reset their way to control all the accounts owned by an organization. A few of the recent incidents we've responded to involve attacks where the attacker obtains...