THE ROOT GROUP NEWSLETTER

New Root Group Consulting Engineer – Jeff Young

The Root Group is pleased to announce the hiring of a new engineer Jeff Young. Jeff comes to us with a strong general infrastructure background as well as a wealth of experience in cloud technology. Most recently employed by Platte River Networks, Jeff was responsible for migrating their Managed Services hosting infrastructure from a physical data center in Denver to a MS Azure hosting infrastructure. Jeff was Active Duty Air Force for 6 years and was responsible for communication, navigation and electronic warfare systems, working on C-130 and B-1B aircraft. His first IT job started as a helpdesk / tier 1 support tech for Wylie Independent School District in Abilene, Texas. The district had 6 schools, 300+ staff and 4,000+ students. He quickly advanced to a sysadmin role and worked in a variety of Linux, Windows and MAC environments. A big fan of scripting, he automated the imaging process for the district and saved 3 hours per workstation deployment. He also automated the Mobile Device Management setup process for their iPad environment. While at Platte River Networks, he was in charge of their internal infrastructure and datacenter operations as well as helping deploy a multi-site firewall installation for a local non-profit. His background includes using standards toolsets such as IT Glue, managing automation initiatives, network installations, and gateway / end-point security deployments. Jeff earned a Fortinet NSE 4 engineering certification.

The New Normal – Industrial Strength Cyber Security Attacks

The current Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack has underscored the reality that we are now living in a cyber security world that has seen a 300% uptick in malicious attacks the past year. Several Root Group clients have recently seen hacking activity that incorporates the kind of skill, research/intelligence-gathering, and persistence that is associated with either state-backed cybermilitia or highly-funded, well-equipped organized crime. Examples include attackers with specific knowledge of people and their job roles and business relationships, forged signature lines incorporating photos of the real employees being impersonated in spear-phishing attacks, and cat-and-mouse games where the tighter they restrict alarm/lockout/quarantine thresholds, the more the attackers adapt and slow down their pacing to try to fit within the envelope to not trigger countermeasures. In lieu of this “new normal” we are hosting a webinar that will give you some tips that may help you tighten your security posture and prevent your enterprise from becoming the next target.

Webinar: Security Best Practices – Basic Steps You Should be Taking

Thursday, May 20, 12:00 MDT

• Firewalls and other perimeter network devices
• Backup systems
• Windows environment / Active Directory
• Exchange/O365
• Endpoint protection
• SCADA networks and industrial controls

Join Zoom Meeting

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