Think You Know Ransomware? The Origins of Cybercrime
How well do you know ransomware? Security hacks and ransomware attacks are constantly in the news. In fact, in June 2023, a zero-day vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer managed file transfer (MFT) product affected over 130 organizations and millions of individuals. And that is only the latest in a constant stream of cybercrime.
Since the advent of the internet, hackers have been developing increasingly sophisticated attacks. But what is most concerning may be that what was once only achievable by highly-skilled hackers is now accessible to anyone. Would-be cybercriminals can easily access the tools and knowledge via the internet to mount an attack. Currently, that most often takes the shape of a ransomware attack—which makes any industry with data a target. Despite this fact, many organizations and individuals continue to remain vulnerable.
Sophos, a leading security software and hardware company, and one of Aunalytics’ technology partners, has released a three-part documentary series examining the history of cybercrime and how it affects everyone—from small businesses to local and national governments. The first episode examines origins of cybercrime and explores why many interconnected systems are susceptible to ransomware attacks. Watch it below:
View the episode on Vimeo.
Are you certain your organization is fully protected? If you aren’t sure, the security experts at Aunalytics can help you determine your organization’s risk. We offer a complete suite of managed security services and maintain a highly secure cloud environment utilizing security best practices. Aunalytics partners with leading technologies in the security field, such as Sophos, to ensure that your organization always stays a step ahead of hackers and other bad actors. Don’t leave your organization vulnerable—contact Aunalytics today.
Organizations Shift to Cloud-Based Analytics and IT Platforms
The growth rates of cloud-based IT solutions in the areas of analytics and artificial intelligence have been substantial in recent years. The increasing volume of data and the need for faster, more accurate insights have driven organizations to adopt cloud-based analytics solutions at a rapid pace. This has resulted in the growth of cloud-based data warehousing, business intelligence, and big data analytics solutions.
Similarly, the growth of artificial intelligence has been driven by the cloud, as it allows organizations to access powerful AI algorithms and training data without having to invest in expensive hardware. The cloud has also made it possible for organizations to scale AI solutions quickly and easily, leading to an increase in the adoption of cloud-based machine learning and deep learning solutions. These trends are expected to continue as organizations look to leverage the power of AI and analytics to gain a competitive edge in the market.
This growth in cloud-based analytics and AI has been driven by the larger business adoption of cloud IT because of its numerous benefits such as increased flexibility, scalability, and cost savings. Cloud technology allows companies to access their data and applications from anywhere, reducing the need for physical infrastructure and freeing up resources for other areas of the business. This shift towards cloud computing has also improved disaster recovery and business continuity, as data can be stored and accessed remotely. Additionally, with the rise of cloud-based solutions, businesses have been able to access advanced technologies and services without having to invest in expensive hardware and software. This has resulted in increased competitiveness, innovation and better overall business performance.
APIs add efficiency and flexibility to cloud environments
The power behind the most widely adopted cloud platforms are APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which play a crucial role as they allow different software systems to communicate with each other and access data from the cloud. This has enabled organizations to build custom solutions and integrate disparate systems seamlessly, making the use of cloud technology much more efficient and flexible.
APIs also allow for automation and streamlining of processes, reducing manual errors and freeing up time for more valuable tasks. APIs make it possible to add new functionality and services to existing systems, allowing for continuous improvement and innovation. In essence, APIs provide a bridge between the cloud and an organization’s systems, enabling organizations to harness the full potential of cloud computing and drive digital transformation.
Analytics moves to the cloud
In terms of business outcomes, cloud-based analytics allow businesses to access and process large amounts of data in real-time, regardless of the size or location of their operations. This enables organizations to make informed decisions quickly and respond to changing market conditions with agility. Secondly, these solutions are much more cost-effective, as businesses only pay for what they use and do not have to invest in expensive hardware or IT infrastructure. The cloud provides businesses with access to a wide range of advanced analytics tools and technologies, enabling them to gain insights from their data in new and innovative ways. These solutions are highly secure and reliable when they are managed by experienced cloud service providers who ensure that data is protected and the solution is always available. Overall, they are considered to be a better choice for businesses because of their scalability, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and secure approach to data analysis.
Likewise, cloud-based AI or AI as a Service (AIaaS) provides organizations with access to deep insights without having to invest in expensive experts or the necessary hardware and software to implement such solutions. This makes it easier for organizations to deploy and scale AI solutions as they only pay for what they use and do not have to invest in maintaining their own infrastructure. Furthermore, these solutions are more flexible and can be customized to meet specific business requirements, enabling organizations to generate valuable insights that help them to differentiate from their competitors. Finally, cloud-based AI makes it possible for organizations to collaborate and share AI models, allowing them to leverage the collective expertise of their partners, customers, and employees to create better solutions. In short, it is a high-value choice for businesses as it provides a more accessible, scalable, affordable, and collaborative approach to artificial intelligence.
Moving to the cloud accelerates digital transformation
Leading research and advisory firm Gartner reported that “Cloud migration is not stopping, IaaS will naturally continue to grow as businesses accelerate IT modernization initiatives to minimize risk and optimize costs. Moving operations to the cloud also reduces capital expenditures by extending cash outlays over a subscription term, a key benefit in an environment where cash may be critical to maintain operations.”
Aunalytics provides a highly redundant and scalable cloud infrastructure that enables midsized businesses to reap the benefits of the cloud at a reasonable cost. The Aunalytics Cloud provides a wide range of solutions—including cloud storage, backup and disaster recovery, application hosting, advanced analytics, and AI. Moving from on-premises computing to a cloud environment is a key step in an organization’s digital transformation.
Financial Institution Cyber Attacks Are on the Rise—Your Institution Is Not Immune
With recent uncertainty in the economy and bank closures hitting the news this year, you may be scrambling to find ways to increase deposits to protect your institution. But a larger, more urgent risk has always been lurking. With over half of financial institutions reporting cyber attacks in a single year, your organization may be next.
Nearly every day we learn of new horror stories from financial institutions who were the victims of elaborate attacks—in fact, 55% reported being a victim of a cyber-attack in a single year.
Bad actors are becoming more sophisticated in their methods. These prevalent attacks have high costs to your business uptime and productivity. A bad attack can also damage your reputation due to closure and data loss, while still costing your bank or credit union large sums of money to pay off ransoms—and you may not even get all of your data back.
Financial institutions hit by cyber-attacks pay, on average, $272,655 in ransom payments. And the average overall cost to remediate the ransomware attack in this sector is $1.59 million.
Do you know where your data lives?
Where you store your data matters, and your storage location may not be optimal for disaster recovery. Storing your backups locally, even if located at another of your facilities, may not protect your data from unknown risks.
In-house servers require large capital expenditures, and you miss out on economies of scale for regular upkeep and maintenance. Giant vendors may seem convenient, but you won’t know exactly where your data resides, and you lose control over the environment.
There’s a better way—Aunalytics backup and disaster recovery solutions can help you avoid losing data or paying large ransoms. We offer concierge solutions tailored to community banks and credit unions—helping you stay steps ahead of increasingly malicious attackers.
Backup and disaster recovery solutions enable the continuous operations of an organization during a disaster event, whether it involves a set of networks or servers, or when all primary IT services have become unavailable. Our solutions leverage the power of data, analytics, and Machine Learning. Disaster Recovery Services, coupled with a comprehensive backup and archival strategy, allow you to remain confident that you are prepared should your business encounter a disaster event.
Investment in Artificial Intelligence is Vital for Banks and Credit Unions
Has your bank or credit union made investments in artificial intelligence yet?
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and the promise it holds for the future, have been making news all year. And it’s no wonder that financial institutions are taking notice—a recent survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit found that 77% of bankers believe that unlocking value from AI will be the differentiator between winning and losing banks. Yet, many institutions are falling behind in AI maturity.
Despite its promise, making a large investment in artificial intelligence may seem risky to many midsized financial institutions. Hiring talent, developing a data management and analytics strategy, building a data platform, and creating AI models can be both time- and resource-intensive. Banks and credit unions want to ensure that the efforts spent to get an AI program off the ground will yield a high ROI, especially in times of economic uncertainty. Yet, failure to innovate and make progress toward digital transformation is not always an option in the highly competitive landscape.
Financial institutions find many uses for AI technologies
Thankfully, an investment in artificial intelligence can improve many processes across an institution. AI can optimize both time- and resource-intensive tasks, decrease risk, and increase revenue by improving the customer experience. For instance, by applying AI and machine learning algorithms to transactional data, banks and credit unions can gain insights into customers or members’ habits and preferences. Some use cases include:
- Detecting and preventing fraud
- Identifying loan default risk at the time of application
- Predicting customer churn
- Winning back business by discovering customer payments going to competitors, and subsequently making a more attractive offer
- Predicting the next best product for each customer then targeting them with the right product at the right time
- Calculating customer value scores in order to better allocate resources to target more valuable customers
Don’t get left behind
Large banks are already utilizing artificial intelligence use cases at scale. In a recent letter to shareholders, Jamie Dimon, Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase wrote, “Artificial intelligence (AI) is an extraordinary and groundbreaking technology. AI and the raw material that feeds it, data, will be critical to our company’s future success—the importance of implementing new technologies simply cannot be overstated.”
Because of this focus, his company has made tremendous investments in AI. They currently have over 300 AI use cases in production, and employ almost 3,000 people in data management, data science, and AI-research-related roles. This underscores how vital these new technologies are to success in the future.
Unfortunately, not every institution has access to talent and technology at the scale of JPMorgan Chase. That’s why Aunaytics has developed a cloud-based data and analytics platform to provide data management, advanced reporting, and predictive AI and machine learning solutions for midsized community banks and credit unions.
Auna, the AI Agent for Financial Institutions, allows institutions to learn more about their customers and members in order to provide a better overall experience—which in turn reduces risk, increases wallet share, and reduces expenses.
Microsoft will be ending patch support for Windows 10—what does that mean for you?
Preparations to end patch support for Windows 10, and eventually end of support entirely, have been in process for quite some time on Microsoft’s part. As far back as 2021, in an article by The Verge which talks about the then upcoming Windows 11, the author commented on the end of support date for Windows 10. The current version of Windows 10, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will continue to receive monthly security update releases through the end of support on October 14, 2025. This information applies to all of the following editions of Windows 10: Home, Pro, Pro Education, and Pro for Workstations
With the end of patch support for Windows 10, vulnerabilities will begin to appear, leaving your network more exposed than ever. The number of bad actors encrypting and stealing data can be overwhelming on the best of days and can cause massive issues and downtime for your company. Any hole in your cyber security could spell disaster for your company.
While it may seem like you have plenty of time to prepare, deadlines can quietly slip by, leaving your network and machines suddenly vulnerable because they are no longer receiving support or security patches. The rate of ransomware attacks remains high, with 66% of respondents across all industries indicating they had been hacked within the last year, says Sophos in their State of Ransomware 2023 report.
With a total of 36% respondents, Sophos also reported exploited vulnerabilities as the number one root cause of ransomware attacks within the last year. Knowing that 66% of companies surveyed in the last year were attacked by malicious actors, the number of ransomware attacks with the root cause of exploited vulnerabilities is quite large.
It’s hard to admit that your network may become unsafe at any point in time, but it’s necessary if you want to be prepared for when your Windows 10 network will no longer be supported. If you can keep track of those important dates, your cyber security should be on the right track. However, it can be a huge undertaking to efficiently manage patching or replace workstations in a timely manner.
With the right partner, you can stop worrying about missing important updates, especially as the end of patch support for Windows 10 is nearing. Aunalytics has a team of security experts, as well as technical support, with the ability to act as your Network Operations Center (NOC). Aunalytics also offers Co-Managed Patching-as-a-Service and many other ways to support the technology that keeps your business up and running. With the support of an experienced Managed IT Services partner, you can rest easy knowing that your cyber security is working hard to keep your data and network safe.
A Managed IT Services Partner Gives In-House IT Teams Much-Needed Support
Managing IT environments is a little bit like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to be faced with on any given day. Regardless of the size of your business, your company still has a unique IT infrastructure that can be difficult to manage easily and efficiently. Those variabilities are where a beneficial relationship with an experienced managed IT services partner comes into play.
Partnering with a managed services provider gives you many advantages, including support and improvement for your security initiatives, increased efficiency in your everyday technology environment, and a happy partnership can lead to cost savings in the long run.
Let’s dive a little deeper into the advantages mentioned above:
- Improved security initiatives and better support – Business organizations are often targeted by bad actors due to not only the amount, but also due to the value of the data that can be gained from stealing your important information. By providing security services, an experienced partner can better protect and insulate your company from cyberthreats. Those security services could include constant vulnerability scanning, manning a Security Operations Center (SOC) when your team is too small or too spread out to do so, and even work with you on patch management.
- Increased efficiency – By reducing downtime in case of attack and bringing productivity back online as quickly as possible, a managed IT services partner helps keep your company up and running efficiently. In addition to keeping your company up and running from a security standpoint, a managed services partner can also help keep your data safe in case of disaster, system wipe, and more, allowing you to get back to doing what you do best as quickly as possible.
- Cost savings – By giving your company access to advanced cloud-based technology and a drove of experts right at their fingertips, you can reduce large capital expenditures and avoid hiring more expensive full-time employees (FTEs). Let the experts do the work for you, giving your team the ability to focus on your internal initiatives instead of attempting to defend your network while shorthanded.
Regardless of your needs, enlisting the help of a managed IT services partner can help ease the burden on your business in both the short- and long-term, allowing your team to focus on working toward the future of your company with experts at their sides, helping them every step of the way. Not only is it a burden off of your team’s shoulders, but it’s also a burden off of your shoulders. Knowing that your company is secured by both your team and a trusted managed services partner gives you the peace of mind that, no matter what happens, your company is safe from serious cyber threats.
From Backup & Disaster Recovery to Cloud Storage and Advanced Security, Aunalytics offers a wide variety of managed services products, all backed by our certified and talented technology experts. We are here to work with you through both your everyday needs and those moments when disaster strikes.
The Truth About Artificial Intelligence in Business
Is the existence of Skynet imminent or is that simply a sci-fi trope? In this brief video, Dr. David Cieslak, Chief Data Scientist at Aunalytics, talks about the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence in business, some potential concerns with AI, and where the technology is headed in the future.
While there exists a broad range of applications for AI, in the business world, this technology has the potential to drastically change how we understand our customers and how we use our data to interact with them. Once created and trained with customer data, AI has the ability to quickly provide suggestions and insights that would otherwise be prohibitively difficult or even impossible to observe on your own.
David Cieslak, PhD, is the Chief Data Scientist at Aunalytics since its inception and leads its Innovation Lab in the development and delivery of complex algorithms designed to solve business problems in the manufacturing/supply chain, financial, healthcare, and media sectors. Prior to Aunalytics, Cieslak was on staff at the University of Notre Dame as part of the research faculty where he contributed on high value grants with both the federal government and Fortune 500 companies. He has published numerous articles in highly regarded journals, conferences, and workshops on the topics of Machine Learning, Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery, Artificial Intelligence, and Grid Computing.
A Data Scientist's Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Business, and the Future
A Data Scientist's Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Business, and the Future
In this interview, David Cieslak, PhD, the Chief Data Scientist at Aunalytics, describes complex analytics concepts such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning, and explains how they are useful for businesses today—and will continue to be in the future. David has been with Aunalytics since its inception and leads its Innovation Lab in the development and delivery of complex algorithms designed to solve business problems in the manufacturing/supply chain, financial, healthcare, and media sectors.
Do you have the tools and talent to set your organization up for analytics success?
Most business leaders would agree: data is a valuable asset. Having up-to-date, accurate data with which to make data-driven decisions currently gives organizations an edge, but eventually, this will become table stakes in most industries, simply to remain competitive. However, an up-front investment in a strong technical foundation and a shift to embrace analytics culture throughout the organization are required to achieve analytics success.
Unfortunately, there are many challenges to overcome when trying to bring siloed and dirty data from multiple sources across your business to a single place to be analyzed, including a lack of time and manpower, and the need for data points that don’t currently exist, to name a few. Using data analytics, it becomes possible to better optimize your business by discovering operational efficiencies, reducing costs, tracking customer trends across your organization, and making strategic decisions based on predictive data models. Is partnering with analytics experts the best choice for mid-sized institutions, or should you hire Full-Time Employees (FTEs) to build and manage your data?
There are multiple ways an analytics platform could be created—we’re going to look at two today.
Build it yourself
The first is choosing to create a custom data platform. While not a bad choice, it could take a FTE years to create your analytics platform—if it’s ever finished. An engineer hired to build a custom platform may leave you high and dry with no one to step in to help. Something like this could cost your business months—or even years—of lost money and productivity, leaving you with nothing to show for your platform building efforts.
Even if your data engineer remains with your business, there are other challenges you may encounter. It can be difficult for a single FTE to stay up to date on the newest technological advances and upgrades. Especially when that person is not only expected to clean and update information on thousands of data records, but also take care of system and software updates, keep up with changing trends in the analytics world, and more. A lack of manpower can also make tasks like finding trends in your data nearly impossible, as data processing may be far behind where your most recent and relevant business analytics can be found.
When it comes to advanced analytics, you would need to find and hire additional employees who are skilled in advanced data analytics, machine learning, and AI techniques, and ideally, familiar with your industry. This can be easier said than done. Data scientists, like many in the technology field, are in high demand, and may be difficult to find and hire in smaller geographical markets.
Work with a partner
A different option is working with a trusted technology partner who brings data analytics expertise straight to you. Partnering with an end-to-end provider often saves your company money while allowing someone else to take care of the nitty gritty that goes into creating reports, graphs, charts, and more. Additionally, you are guaranteed to have access to the team you need to build algorithms and find insights in your data. A partner will consistently provide you with the right tools, talent, and resources, while supporting you the entire way. But how could an Analytics as a Service partner help you find the true value of your data?
A good partner will be able to offer the required resources to achieve analytics success—a foundational data platform, automated data management, access to data experts, and data delivery methods such as relevant and actionable dashboards and reports. Imagine having a regular report, generated overnight, every night, for you to review first thing in the morning—without having to invest in many new FTEs and years of development time.
When looking for a data analytics partner, all the things above are important for creating a successful partnership that leads to analytics success. Aunalytics provides data processing and analytics help and would never expect you to go it alone. When you hire us, you hire data scientists, data engineers, and data analysts, reducing the need for multiple expensive FTEs. By having access to a team of data experts by your side, your business can find itself enabled to make better, faster, and smarter decisions based on consistent, real-time data.
How State and Local Governments Can Use Technology to Overcome Economic Challenges
How State and Local Governments Can Use Technology to Overcome Economic Challenges
At present, state and local governments are confronted with significant challenges stemming from the current state of the economy. This includes a decrease in tax revenues, sustained high inflation, and a shortage of proficient IT personnel, who are vital to their day-to-day operations. Industry experts consider technology as an effective solution to address inadequacies during challenging economic periods.
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