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While ransomware wasn’t the only thing behind the decision to close Lincoln College, located in rural Illinois and established in 1865, it was the final blow after taking substantial financial losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The school, which had survived through the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, two world wars and even a fire in 1912 will close its doors for good on May 13th, 2022.

The ransomware attack which occurred in December 2021 crippled their recruiting and fundraising efforts for two months, not being resolved until March 2022 as a statement on the school’s website reads.

We’re continuing from last week where we touched on how technology integrates with the field of dentistry, we want to switch gears from a business sector that helps us maintain our tooth structure to one that helps us maintain our societal structure. We’re looking at how technology can help those in the construction.

Dental practitioners are not technology novices, new technologies emerge all the time that help aid patients in the care of their teeth and in advancing restoration processes to combat the effects of tooth decay (just look at the use of lasers for repairing cavities).

However, we see all the time that our dental practice owning clients will still be stuck in the past when it comes to the rest of their technology.

As an IT service provider, we’re passionate about cybersecurity because we see the effects having inadequate coverage can have on businesses first hand.

The devastation that can occur after a cyber attack is staggering, we’ve given you the statistics before, such as:

The cost of cybercrime is predicted to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025
Cryptojacking cases quadrupled in 2021, but the hackers don’t make very much (less than $6 per day), however that doesn’t stop them from trying to gain access to your machines
It takes on average 287 for cybersecurity teams to detect and contain a data breach
Phishing is involved in 36% of data breaches (can you identify the signs of a phishing email?)
DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks are skyrocketing, with 9.75 million occurring in 2021

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the release of our Tech Tip Card Deck, our deck contains 56 tips for getting your cybersecurity house in order with custom art representing each tip.

This week, John Oliver of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” aired an eye-opening segment on the world of data brokers and how easy it is to create a very detailed profile about an individual simply from their online browsing history. We suggest watching that segment (which can be found on YouTube) but we also wanted to touch base on this topic ourselves and explain what happens, why this happens, and what you can do to browse safely (and privately) online.

The due date for filing your taxes is just 10 days away as of writing, and as tax filers scramble to gather needed information to finish (or start) their filing – scammers are looking for ways to take advantage of the mad dash that occurs for many Americans every year.

If you’re using a free email service such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or even AOL – it’s probably time to make the move to using your business’s domain instead.

We understand it can be hard to let an email you’ve been using for a long time go, and there can be some growing pains when you make the switch.

As we discussed last week, financial scams may be on the rise in 2022. Social engineering is a pretty common tactic utilized by scammers when it comes to siphoning funds from unwitting victims, but there are some tools you can use to combat it.

Recently a company called V7 Labs has released an extension for Chrome that’s able to detect artificially generated profile pictures, such as those created by Thispersondoesnotexist.

As we’re nearing a month into the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine, cyber warfare between the two countries is reaching an all time peak. We covered the topic of Ukraine’s “IT Army” recently in this blog, and we mentioned growing concerns we’ve seen from users that there may be a spill over effect when it comes to cyber threats.

At Valley Techlogic we believe educating our community on internet safety and providing concrete goals for businesses in our area to help improve their cybersecurity measures whether or not they're covered by a Valley Techlogic plan is a valuable resource our company can provide to make us all a little safer online.