Important: Microsoft 365 – Term and Prices Announcement

As a Security Provider of Security Software by Rackspace be aware Microsoft will be reaching into your pocketbook (Wrong) MspPortal Partners refuses to sell O365.

Rackspace offers a Standalone or Hosted mail server and at MspPortal Partners monthly and no contract pricing.

We previously shared an announcement about changes to the Microsoft 365 CSP experience regarding the enforcement of annual-commit subscription terms, price increases on select products, and a premium charge for monthly-commit licenses. Microsoft is now enforcing annual commitments which historically they have not enforced, and they have created an offer for monthly-commitment options but with a premium charge.

This communication serves as a reminder that monthly-commit licenses will receive a price increase due to the pricing premium from Microsoft for monthly adjustment flexibility. As required by Rackspace’s agreement with our Customers, this communication serves as your 45-day notice that Rackspace will begin to pass Microsoft’s price increase through to our customers on July 1, 2022, per the terms of our agreement.

Microsoft is currently not allowing terms to change from monthly to annual commitments. However, we are working closely with Microsoft to provide an option to allow our customers to switch to annual licenses prior to July 1 to avoid the monthly premium should they wish to do so. Please continue to monitor the control panel where you manage licenses, as we will enable this feature via the control panel once we come to a resolution with Microsoft.

In the initial announcement, we announced Microsoft’s price increases on six products, reflected on invoices as of April 1 with pricing as follows (annual-commit pricing, per user/per month):

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Apple Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products

Original release date: May 17, 2022

Apple has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in multiple products. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. Note: Apple notes they are aware of a report that states CVE-2022-22675 may have been actively exploited. CVE-2022-22675 affects watchOS, tvOS, and macOS Big Sur.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Apple security pages for the following products and apply the necessary updates.

watchOS 8.6
tvOS 15.3
macOS Catalina
macOS Big Sur 11.6.6
macOS Monterey 12.4
iOS 15.5 and iPad OS 15.5
Xcode 13.4

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Microsoft the No. 1 Most-Spoofed Brand in Phishing Attacks (O365)

1) Microsoft the No. 1 Most-Spoofed Brand in Phishing Attacks
Nearly 60% of all phishing attacks impersonate Microsoft and about half a million Microsoft 365 accounts were compromised in 2021, new data shows.

Barracuda Networks’ telemetry — from from millions of emails it analyzed — shows that in 2021, a little over half of all social engineering attacks came via phishing, and Microsoft was the most-impersonated brand in those attack attempts. Overall, attackers sent 3 million emails from 12,000 compromised accounts, and one in five organizations suffered an account compromise last year.

As a Security Software Distributor of Barracuda there security mail which is by far the best in the industry. Built from scratch using open source. For a very inexpensive dollar amount you could be protected> Call your MSP/Tech firm for pricing and then have them call MspPortal Partners to assist in implementing a secure solution at no additional cost.

1) Google Emergency Update Fixes Chrome Zero-Day
Google patches a critical flaw in its Chrome browser, bringing its count of zero-day vulnerabilities fixed in 2022 to four already. Do you really want to use Chrome or Google period let alone Google Mail
2) Microsoft Releases Advisory to Address Critical Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2022-26809)
3)Microsoft Releases April 2022 Security Updates (112)
4) Apple Releases Security Updates (its getting worse)

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Bitdefender enforces two-factor authentication for all GravityZone Cloud accounts on April 12, 2022 IMPORTANT

Bitdefender enforces two-factor authentication for all GravityZone Cloud accounts on April 12, 2022 (Read More)

Due to a scheduled update, Control Center will be unavailable from 4/12/2022, 8:30:00 PM GMT-07:00 to 4/12/2022, 11:30:00 PM GMT-07:00. Release Notes

Bitdefender has today released version 7.4.10.200020 of Endpoint Security for Mac on slow ring. The release notes are available here (English only).

Industry News Security

Google Fixes Critical Security Flaw in Chrome’s Blink Engine – Patch Now! (https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/google-fixes-critical-security-flaw-in-chromes-blink-engine-patch-now/)

Google this week is rolling out an incremental update to Chrome users to address multiple security flaws, including many labeled high risk. One flaw, discovered in the browser’s rendering engine, is rated critical. Chrome 99 has been around since the beginning of March [https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/chrome-99-rolls-out-with-dozens-of-security-fixes-update-now/] . In the meantime, researchers have kept busy mining the browser’s code for bugs, not just to keep users safe from hackers, but also to fetch a well-deserved bug bounty. Yesterday personally I dealt with 3 gmail scams account be hacked and sending encrypted messages on compromised mail accounts

Researchers Identify Backdoor Infection Spike on Several GoDaddy-Hosted Websites

Researchers Identify Backdoor Infection Spike on Several GoDaddy-Hosted Websites (https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/researchers-identify-backdoor-infection-spike-on-several-godaddy-hosted-websites/)
Security researchers have noticed a surge in backdoor infections on hundreds of websites hosted on GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress service, all compromised by the same payload. The incident affects websites such as tsoHost, MediaTemple, Domain Factory, Heart Internet,

Beware and update your security and change your passwords at least every 30-60 days

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Bitdefender / Distributor

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

More Orgs Suffered Successful Phishing Attacks in 2021 Than in 2020

Enterprise organizations appear to be falling even further behind in their battle against phishing threats despite heightened awareness of the problem and efforts to curb it.

A new study shows that in 2021 more organizations experienced at least one successful email-based phishing attack than the year before. There were also more opportunistic and targeted phishing attacks last year compared with 2020, as well as phishing attacks involving ransomware and business email compromise (BEC).

Researchers recently analyzed data from a survey of 600 IT and security professionals and another survey of 3,500 employees from seven countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia. The researchers also analyzed data gathered from some 100 million simulated phishing attacks and more than 15 million emails that end users reported as being suspicious.

Seventy-eight percent of organizations experienced a ransomware attack in which a phishing email was the initial infection vector. Seventy-seven percent reported a phishing-related BEC incident — an 18-point increase from 2020. Overall, 12% more organizations reported being victims of an indiscriminate or opportunistic phishing attack, while organizations reporting more targeted spear-phishing and BEC attacks went up 20%.

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Bitdefender and Barracuda Distributor for Msp’s
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Hackers slip into Microsoft Teams chats to distribute malware

Security researchers warn that some attackers are compromising Microsoft Teams accounts to slip into chats and spread malicious executables to participants in the conversation.

More than 270 million users are relying on Microsoft Teams every month, many of them trusting the platform implicitly, despite the absence of protections against malicious files.
Simple but efficient method

Researchers at Avanan, a Check Point company that secures cloud email and collaboration platforms, found that hackers started to drop malicious executable files in conversations on Microsoft Teams communication platform.

The attacks started in January, the company says in a report today, and the threat actor inserts in a chat an executable file called “User Centric” to trick the user into running it.

Once executed, the malware writes data into the system registry installs DLLs and establishes persistence on the Windows machine.
“In this Teams attack, hackers have attached a malicious Trojan document to a chat thread. When clicked on, the file will eventually take over the user’s computer” – Avanan

Manage Microsoft Teams settings for your organization
Here you can turn on or turn off file sharing and cloud file storage options. read Article and turn off file sharing

Users can upload and share files from cloud storage services in Teams channels and chats. Cloud storage options in Teams currently include Dropbox, Box, Citrix files, Google Drive, and Egnyte. Turn on the switch for the cloud storage providers that your organization wants to use.

Using either the above solution and fixing the issues or

Use Bitdefender/MspPortal Partners malware protection in combination of Barracuda/MspPortal Partners Spam, Phishing malware protection

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President Bitdefender /MSP Aggregator – Distributor “Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Google Releases Security Updates for Chrome (Must Apply)

Google Releases Security Updates for Chrome (Must Apply) (Review update)
02/15/2022 07:25 AM EST

Original release date: February 15, 2022

Google has released Chrome version 98.0.4758.102 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This version addresses vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system. One of these vulnerabilities has been detected in exploits in the wild.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Chrome Release Note and apply the necessary update as soon as possible.

I have always supported Firefox. As bad as I personally think Facebook is, I think Google products and browser are worse.

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President Bitdefender /MSP Aggregator – Distributor “Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

CISA Adds Nine Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

Original release date: February 15, 2022

CISA has added nine new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence that threat actors are actively exploiting the vulnerabilities listed in the table below. These types of vulnerabilities are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors of all types and pose significant risk to the federal enterprise.
CVE Number CVE Title Remediation Due Date
CVE-2022-24086 Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source Improper Input Validation Vulnerability 3/1/2022
CVE-2022-0609 Google Chrome Use-After-Free Vulnerability 3/1/2022
CVE-2019-0752 Microsoft Internet Explorer Type Confusion Vulnerability 8/15/2022 not good
CVE-2018-8174 Microsoft Windows VBScript Engine Out-of-Bounds Write Vulnerability 8/15/2022 not good
CVE-2018-20250 WinRAR Absolute Path Traversal Vulnerability 8/15/2022
CVE-2018-15982 Adobe Flash Player Use-After-Free Vulnerability 8/15/2022
CVE-2017-9841 PHPUnit Command Injection Vulnerability 8/15/2022
CVE-2014-1761 Microsoft Word Memory Corruption Vulnerability 8/15/2022 not good
CVE-2013-3906 Microsoft Graphics Component Memory Corruption Vulnerability 8/15/2022 not good

The two agencies also shared a list of measures that can help admins mitigate BlackByte attacks: 2-14-2022

Thanks to Bleeping Computer

Implement regular backups of all data to be stored as air gapped, password protected copies offline.
Ensure these copies are not accessible for modification or deletion from any system where the original data resides.
Implement network segmentation, such that all machines on your network are not accessible from every other machine.
Install and regularly update MspPortal Partners/Bitdefender antivirus software on all hosts, and enable real time detection.
Install updates/patch operating systems, software, and firmware as soon as updates/patches are released be careful of this look at KB’s first.
Review domain controllers, servers, workstations, and active directories for new or unrecognized user accounts.
Audit user accounts with administrative privileges and configure access controls with least privilege in mind. Do not give all users administrative privileges.
Disable unused remote access/Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) ports and monitor remote access/RDP logs for any unusual activity.
Consider adding an email banner to emails received from outside your organization.
Disable hyperlinks in received emails MspPortal Partners/Barracuda
Use double authentication when logging into accounts or services.
Ensure routine auditing is conducted for all accounts
Ensure all the identified IOCs are input into the network SIEM for continuous monitoring and alerts.
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Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Bitdefender /MSP Aggregator – Distributor

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”