Capstone Works Blog

2024 was a record-breaking year for cybersecurity threats. Small businesses and individuals are constantly targeted by cybercriminals, and while there are plenty of solutions available that help prevent and detect these types of threats, the biggest weak spots come from poor cybersecurity hygiene. 

This guide will highlight several best practices that every single individual should keep in mind to help protect themselves and the data they interact with at work.

We encourage you to share this article with your coworkers, friends, and colleagues.

A Message for Business Owners:
Please pass this blog post around to your staff, as it raises many important issues that will not only help protect them as employees but as typical Internet users as well. Most cybersecurity incidents today are caused by user error, which means that many problems could be avoided by simple awareness.

In today's interconnected world, the Internet serves as an indispensable tool for communication, commerce, and entertainment. However, with great power comes great responsibility. The convenience of online transactions and social interactions is tempered by the risks posed by cybercriminals. This guide aims to arm you with the necessary strategies to navigate the web safely, ensuring that your personal information remains private and protected. By understanding and implementing the recommended safety measures, you can confidently engage in online activities without compromising your security.

A newly released report reveals that there were over 3,000 reported data breaches in 2023. This resulted in the personal information of millions of people being stolen. The average cost of one of these data breaches was $4.45 million. Almost every single organization polled (97 percent!) reported that they have seen an increase in cyber threats since 2022.

Cybersecurity is absolutely critical today, and it’s a problem that everyone needs to be aware of. As a regular person, going about your day, you might not even notice if you are the victim of a data breach.  Because of this, most people have a big forcefield of blissful ignorance that makes them feel immune to the bulk of cyberthreats.

But that’s the point—the best cyberthreats are hard to spot. You don’t realize you are being scammed.

For most people, the only thing protecting all of their personal data, their email, access to all of their online accounts, their bank, and more, is just a handful of characters. It’s estimated that there is about a 20% chance that any given account doesn’t have any sort of multi-factor security, so if you can figure out a person’s password, you might be able to gain access to whatever you want.

We’ve been talking about cybersecurity quite a bit lately, and for good reason. Any organization that doesn’t acknowledge the threat that comes with being ill-prepared in the face of a cyberattack is basically sitting on a ticking time bomb. 

Let’s cut to the chase: scams are everywhere out there today, which makes it important that you are aware of how to avoid them. Let’s run through a few basic tips we always recommend.

Phishing is one of the leading vectors for larger cyberattacks, and right now, it’s the biggest cyberthreat for Texas-based businesses. In this guide, we’re going to cover what to look for. If you are a business owner, we recommend sharing this blog with your entire staff and asking that they read and confirm they understand it. Go ahead and share it as much as you want—if you find it useful, we’d love to hear from you!

Phishing attacks have been a huge problem for businesses over the last several years, and it is only getting worse. While most business owners and managers understand that phishing attacks can lead to malware or the theft of personal information, there is a specific type of phishing attack that targets employees specifically to undermine a C-level.

It is no secret that a cybersecurity incident can land the company it impacts in legal trouble. Based on this assumption, we feel safe in asserting that such an outcome could be particularly damaging (not to mention embarrassing) for a law firm to experience. Let’s review some of the ways that a law firm needs to ensure its security, and how we can help.

Cases of COVID-19 have been surging once again in Texas, with younger patients being admitted to hospitals in unprecedented numbers. While these circumstances are obviously problematic enough, cybercriminals will not hesitate to use the confusion this crisis is creating to their advantage. Let’s go over some of the security risks that healthcare organizations currently face, and what should be done to minimize these risks.

Throughout the nation, hospitals and other medical institutions are under cyberattack; in fact, the threat has reached the level that the Joint Cybersecurity Advisory released a press release warning of ransomware attacks. Travis County's Central Health is the latest victim of this unsettling trend. However, they won't be the last; learn how to protect your organization.