As we begin another work week (or launch out on a well deserved vacation for some), now is a good time to remember to be vigilant as we go through these summer months, whether it’s wearing a hat and sun block at the beach or watching out for little kids when driving through your neighborhood. Today I also received a reminder about the excellent technology and support we have here at Alliant as we do our jobs and continue to drive the business forward. In today’s example below, vigilance shows itself to be necessary as we leverage even the simplest technology and do our work, and (luckily) Alliant has put the technology in place to help us all with our IT vigilance. Here’s what happened today.
This morning I received a rather ordinary looking email, apparently from the popular website PayPal.com. The email indicated changes required to update all accounts due to some new regulatory guidelines, and suggested my necessary account update was only a click away. The first screen shot below shows the email that most PayPal account holders may have received over the weekend. The second screen shot below shows the kind of ever-vigilant protection our friends at Webroot provide to all of Alliant’s web traffic every day, a screen shot I received after I clicked on the “Get Verified” icon as instructed. Alliant’s network protection had saved the day!
Instead of finding myself in the midst of a phishing site, where hackers entice you to enter valuable account information to later use against you, or to plant malware onto your computer for future attack, I instead received the unmistakable Webroot red banner page telling me I’d been had, protecting me from damage. Webroot was watching all traffic into and out of my computer, even as I work remotely. And even though the original email was sent to my Yahoo.com email account, Webroot’s protection was still in place as the session moved from email to web traffic. And because this AMS Web Defense service is available not only internally, but also to our clients, this is the type of universal 24x7 protection we can also offer our clients for only a few dollars per user per month.
So wear your sun block, keep an eye out for kids playing near the street, and contact me or anyone on the AMS team to learn more about how our Managed Security Services, including our AMS Web and Email Defense solutions, can keep your network protected as well. Have a safe and productive rest of the summer, recharge your batteries when you can, and let’s all get ready to finish out 2011 with a bang.
