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PRESS RELEASE: SOCBOX Changes Its Name to FIT Cybersecurity in Major Rebrand

Posted on November 30, 2021November 29, 2022 by Megan Haley

Network Security Provider Joins Sister Company FIT Solutions

San Diego, California, November 30, 2021 – SOCBOX has announced its name change to FIT Cybersecurity, joining its sister company FIT Solutions in a major rebrand. Founded in 2012 by CEO Ephraim Ebstein, the company is approaching its ten-year anniversary of helping organizations achieve their business goals through technology. FIT, which stands for Freedom Information Technologies, serves as an acronym uniting both brands under the same leadership and core values. Though the companies will remain separate entities along with their technical teams, Ebstein’s goal was to provide a more streamlined experience for clients and partners.

FIT Cybersecurity prides itself on providing quality solutions to critical industries such as legal, financial, education, healthcare and manufacturing. Ebstein shared the fundamental principles of the business: “FIT Solutions was created because of our desire to impact as many lives as possible for the better. This meant two things: creating opportunities for the team we care for dearly, and solving business problems for our clients to help those organizations achieve their objectives,” he said. “FIT Solutions looks to work with organizations that also have big goals so that together, we can help extend the reach to help as many people as possible.”

Unlike many of its competitors, FIT Cybersecurity offers an around-the-clock team of expert analysts, a human element that differentiates the company from others in the marketplace. “Most offerings on the market are proprietary tools that send alerts when incidents or suspicious activity are detected. Addressing such alerts still requires a human on your team to investigate and decide whether further action is necessary. Many organizations try to handle this in-house, but quickly realize that a single employee, even full-time, cannot properly monitor and manage the security tools because of 24/7 limitations,” Ebstein said. “We take care of that for you by acting as your 24/7 cybersecurity team, monitoring and managing whatever tools and systems you have in place for a fraction of the fully-burdened resources needed to handle it in-house. We investigate any activity or alerts, and take the appropriate action to deal with any security incident.”

FIT specializes in serving long-term healthcare facilities and law firms, both of which need solid IT and cybersecurity strategies. As Ebstein stated, “Technology and Cybersecurity are like the ‘tires and brakes’ of an organization. It is critical that they work well, especially the faster the organization moves. Those two services will determine whether an organization will be able to achieve its goals.”

However, the disparate branding had caused confusion for prospective partners, which Ebstein hopes to alleviate with the rebrand. “Our IT and cybersecurity offerings are very different and are operated by different technical teams. Despite that, our core values and the philosophy and processes used to deliver results are the same,” he said. When asked which businesses should consider FIT Solutions as their service provider of choice, he answered, “Businesses that are focused on growth, that are tired of having IT and cybersecurity issues and want the best value for their investment. Organizations that are focused on securing their assets and utilizing technology to allow them to scale successfully should have a conversation with us.”

Ebstein urges potential clients to research FIT Solutions to learn more. “The best way to see what it’s like to be a FIT partner is to look at our Google reviews. Two of our core values are ‘Raving Fan Culture’ (based on a book by Ken Blanchard) and ‘Results-Driven.’ This means it is in our DNA to overdeliver and, even when mistakes happen, to deliver results,” he said.

About FIT Cybersecurity: Formerly known as SOCBOX, FIT Cybersecurity is a subsidiary of FIT Solutions, offering a team of world-class cybersecurity experts dedicated to helping clients protect their valuable assets. In doing so, they combine a state-of-the-art Security Operations Center (SOC) with the best cybersecurity tools and managed security services available. FIT Cybersecurity becomes an organization’s cybersecurity team, monitoring the environment 24/7 to detect and prevent cyberthreats. Learn more here.

Why Firewall and Antivirus Aren’t Enough to Secure Your Business

Posted on June 2, 2020September 7, 2021 by CT Team

“I have a firewall and antivirus, so I’m secure, right?” We hear this question from companies all the time. The answer is, that’s a great start, but you’re not quite done. Why not? To find out, let’s take a closer look at these two security measures.

What Does a Firewall Do?

A firewall is a program on your network that acts as gatekeeper, monitoring the inbound and outbound traffic. If you think of your business like a bank, the firewall would be like the security guard stationed at the entrance that prevents unwanted intruders from entering. That sounds like a pretty good system, until you consider a few drawbacks of firewalls.

Firewalls operate based on predetermined rules. If someone figures out what those rules are, it’s not that hard to outsmart the firewall. In our bank example, your security guard may be instructed to turn away anyone in a red hat. Knowing this, the intruder wears a blue hat instead and is allowed to enter.
A firewall is a reactive, problem-by-problem solution. It reacts to the immediate threat; it doesn’t look ahead to see the next approaching threat. The effectiveness of your firewall depends on those preset rules to block attacks, so if you’re not proactively watching the latest cyberthreats (and installing regular updates), it can’t fully do its job. This can leave you vulnerable to viruses or other cyberthreats.
Your firewall protects your office network. If your employees access work emails or files from their personal devices, they can take that data outside of your company network. This has become a bigger threat with the recent pandemic-driven increases in work-from-home arrangements. Pandemic aside, though, if your employees conduct work outside of the office, perhaps using hotel Wi-Fi on a business trip, your company data could now be exposed on an unsecured network—where your firewall can’t protect it.
Firewalls can’t stop user error. Criminals have a whole gamut of tricks for penetrating your system. Social engineering and phishing attacks in particular can completely sidestep your external defenses by targeting internal users. If one of your users unknowingly clicks a malicious link, your entire network could be shut down.

Does this mean you shouldn’t use a firewall? Absolutely you should; having a security guard with limited power is better than having none at all. We just want to make it clear why businesses shouldn’t entrust the safety of their data solely to their firewall.

What About Antivirus?

Antivirus is software that can prevent, detect, and remove malware. In our banking example, this would be like another security guard that makes regular rounds inside the bank, looking for suspicious activity. There are different kinds of antivirus software:

Malware signature antivirus: This type scans for the digital fingerprint of a malicious program, known as a signature. The antivirus software comes preloaded with thousands of signatures, allowing the software to quickly identify and dispose of a threat that matches one from its database.
System monitoring antivirus: This software identifies malware by looking for suspicious or unusual behavior—for example, if a user tries to access an unfamiliar website, or starts using significantly more data than usual.
Machine-learning antivirus: Machine-learning pools data from multiple antivirus programs to recognize threats that it hasn’t seen before—an advantage over signature-based antivirus.

Given these abilities, why does antivirus not cover all the bases?

Signature-based antivirus can only protect you against the threats that were programmed into it. It has no defenses against new threats or zero-day exploits.
There are plenty of free antivirus software programs out there, and, while better than nothing, their database of malware signatures to check against is usually quite small. This drastically reduces the amount of threats it can protect you against.
Antivirus doesn’t protect users against phishing attacks. A 2020 report by Check Point Research found that 65% of US organizations suffered a successful phishing attack in 2019—that’s two out of every three businesses!
Most users don’t have antivirus on their phones or tablets, potentially leaving their device—and your network—vulnerable to attack.
Cybercriminals represent the dark side of human ingenuity. They’re creative, constantly looking for new ways to get around your antivirus and firewall defenses. Even machine-learning antivirus software relies on combinations of data points. If an attacker figures out what combination will alert your antivirus to his presence, all he has to do is change one data point to trick it into marking him as legitimate traffic.

What You Can Do

Update your firewall and antivirus regularly. Software patches and updates serve to reduce your system’s vulnerability and increase your software’s ability to identify and repel attacks.
Develop a multi-layer security program. To return to the bank illustration, which bank would you trust with your money? A bank with one aged security guard? Or one with a whole patrol of security guards, cameras, alarm systems, biometric locks, and a dedicated monitoring team? Every security measure you add—SIEM, traffic analyzer, log management, SOC services, etc.—makes your organization that much stronger and more secure.
Provide regular awareness training for your employees. Modern phishing and social engineering attacks are very sophisticated, and can be hard to identify. Just like your firewall and antivirus need to be updated frequently to stay effective, so does your team. A structured training program, either monthly or quarterly, can help your team recognize and repel attacks on your network.
Don’t ‘set it and forget it’. Overconfidence or the feeling that you’ve already taken steps to defend your network can lull you into a false sense of security. Criminals are constantly testing new attacks, which calls for constant vigilance on our part to keep our defenses up to date. A third-party firm can conduct a social engineering campaign or penetration test for your organization to identify areas for improvement in your network or team.

FIT Solutions provides IT services, including cybersecurity packages. If you need an IT environment that scales with you, give us a call today at 888-339-5694 or contact us here.

Why “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It” Doesn’t Work for IT

Posted on May 12, 2020September 1, 2021 by CT Team

Let’s say you have network equipment that’s been in place for years and is working with minimal or no issues. Paying to maintain service and support on those items might seem like an unnecessary expense. Certainly that’s the way many businesses look at it when scrutinizing the IT budget and looking for items to cut. The logic to justify de-funding those contracts is pretty simple: “If it isn’t broke, why pay to fix it?” However, that is a risky position to take.

Late in 2019, a manufacturer of wireless access points announced that a number of security vulnerabilities — some with a “critical” rating — had been found in its products. They fixed the vulnerabilities in short order and distributed the fixes in the form of software upgrades to the affected products. Here’s the rub: businesses without active support contracts didn’t have access to the upgrades.

Why Service Contracts Are Vital for Critical Infrastructure

The access points in question are widely used in installations that call for reliable, widespread business-class wireless coverage. In other words, they’re an extremely critical element of the infrastructure for organizations that rely on Wi-Fi to run their business. With the prospect of a security vulnerability that would allow an intruder access and potentially bring the entire wireless network down, the seemingly minor risk of letting the service contracts lapse turned into a major risk overnight. All of a sudden, companies were faced with an unbudgeted expense. They either had to re-up the contracts for all of the controllers and access points, or else replace their entire wireless infrastructure.

The same scenario and risks apply to all manner of critical network infrastructure, including switches, routers, firewalls, VPNs and servers. Vulnerabilities are constantly being discovered and patched with updates. We often think of these devices as appliances or hardware, but the reality is, they have software inside that’s meant to be upgraded to improve performance, add features or address security problems. Those devices are at the heart of the network and hold the keys to keeping the business running.

Is the Gamble Worth It?

Many companies do take the risk of running without maintenance agreements on key pieces of network equipment. They have weighed the risks against the costs and reached the conclusion that the gamble is worth taking. While at FIT Solutions we don’t recommend this approach, we do respect that it is a business decision. We are more concerned with businesses that simply allow their service and support contracts to lapse as a cost-cutting measure, without fully understanding the risks and taking them into account.

At FIT Solutions, part of our service is knowing what the vendor policies are with regard to upgrades, support, and service agreements, and keeping track of whether your agreements are active. We use this information to help you understand the risks of running your critical network infrastructure without the benefit of a safety net. Want a true picture of these hidden risks? Give us a call at 888-339-5694 today.

Tag: Cybersecurity