Practical advice, industry trends, and real-world IT knowledge for businesses that want to stay ahead.
Microsoft’s October 2026 Patch Tuesday fixed a record 1,411 vulnerabilities, including one actively exploited zero-day that bypasses Windows’ own file-warning system. The same day, Windows 10 Extended Support expired for good. Here’s what small businesses need to do.
Every small business has a spreadsheet that quietly became the database. It doesn’t throw an error when you outgrow it; it just gets slower and less trustworthy. Here are the symptoms, what to fix before you replace it, and what "one source of truth" actually means for a 10-person company.
Most of the value in small-business automation isn’t in anything that looks like AI. It’s in five boring tasks: lead intake, appointment reminders, invoice drafting, the weekly numbers, and inbox filing. Here’s where to start, and three tasks to keep in human hands.
It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month. CISA publishes the same four rules every October: MFA, strong passwords, phishing awareness, and software updates. We’ve covered 29 attacks this year. Most of them exploited one of these gaps.
CVE-2026-104286 is a CVSS 9.8 zero-day in Fortinet FortiMail being actively exploited right now. One crafted HTTP request. No credentials needed. The full patch isn’t out yet for most affected versions. CISA’s remediation deadline was yesterday.
Zenity Labs disclosed three vulnerabilities in Salesforce Agentforce last week, collectively called SalesBleed. An attacker submits a poisoned lead through your website’s contact form. Your own AI agent does the rest.
Microsoft tracked a passkey-themed phishing campaign active since May 2026 where attackers call employees on personal phones, impersonate IT help desk, and steal Microsoft 365 session tokens using an adversary-in-the-middle technique. Standard SMS-based MFA doesn’t stop it.
Microsoft’s September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixed 974 vulnerabilities, the most in its history. Two zero-days are being actively exploited by multiple nation-state groups through an exploit kit called BlueMoon. Here’s what small businesses need to patch first.
Verizon analyzed 12,000 breaches for its 2026 report. In 73% of ransomware cases, the victim’s credentials had already been compromised before the attack. Half of those credential events happened within 95 days of the ransom demand.
CVE-2026-68820 was exploited by North Korea’s Lazarus Group for five weeks before Microsoft patched it on August 11. The attack vector was fake recruiting emails with trojanized PDFs. The rootkit they installed can blind 94 endpoint security platforms.
CVE-2026-59310, a critical directory-traversal flaw in VMware vCenter, was patched on July 29. By August 3, a suspected China-backed group had compromised 361 servers across 47 countries. At least one victim ended up with ransomware.
CVE-2026-20349 is being actively exploited against Cisco ASA and FTD firewalls. An unauthenticated attacker can send one HTTP request and crash your device. CISA’s remediation deadline for federal agencies was August 14. There is no workaround.
N-able’s N-central remote management platform was actively exploited through a flaw that bypassed an earlier patch. Attackers used the platform’s own Take Control feature to install persistent Cloudflare tunnel backdoors on managed client computers. Patching the server doesn’t remove them.
An ad tech vendor's JavaScript tracking script was compromised on July 26. For roughly 24 hours, every website running Adform's code silently swapped visitors' cryptocurrency wallet addresses with ones controlled by attackers. The 1,800 affected businesses had no idea it was happening.
Voice phishing attacks surged 442% last year. Now criminals are using AI to clone voices from a voicemail greeting or company video and call your employees pretending to be you. Here's how these attacks work and what to do about them.
July 2026 Patch Tuesday dropped 622 CVEs, the most in Microsoft history. Two zero-days are already being actively exploited: an AD FS flaw that lets attackers forge tokens and impersonate any user, and a SharePoint privilege escalation. CISA's deadline is July 28.
Criminals are impersonating Interpol in phishing emails that deliver custom ransomware to small businesses. Bitdefender researchers found the decryption key hardcoded inside the malware itself, suggesting the real lever is fear, not encryption.
SimpleHelp, a remote management tool used by IT providers to fix your computers, has a CVSS 10.0 authentication bypass. One compromised server gives attackers access to every endpoint the provider manages. CISA's remediation deadline already passed.
Someone broke into ShapedPlugin's update servers and pushed backdoored code to paying customers through official plugin update channels. Sites installed the malware automatically. The breach went unnoticed for 20 days.
A credential-stuffing campaign called FortiBleed has compromised more than 86,000 Fortinet FortiGate firewalls across 194 countries. CISA issued an alert Thursday. The attack method wasn't sophisticated. It was a password list.
A Chinese cybercrime ring used Google's Gemini AI to generate 1.59 million fake websites and blast 2.5 million phishing texts in two weeks. Google filed suit on June 12. The kits are already sold. Here's what small businesses need to know.
19,000 FIFA-themed domains are already live ahead of the 2026 World Cup. The FBI issued a warning two weeks ago. Banking malware is hiding in pirate streaming apps. Here's what small businesses need to know before the opening whistle.
CVE-2026-41091 and CVE-2026-45498 are two actively exploited flaws in Microsoft Defender. One escalates an attacker to SYSTEM-level control. The other blinds Defender's update engine. CISA's federal deadline was June 3. Here's what small businesses need to check.
CVE-2026-42897, a zero-day in on-prem Exchange Server's Outlook Web Access, is under active attack right now. Just opening a crafted email can let attackers run code in an employee's browser session. No permanent patch yet.
Microsoft launched Copilot Business for small teams at $21 per user per month, with introductory pricing through June 30. Before you add it to your bill, here's an honest look at what you actually get and whether it's worth it.
This week, 8,800 universities had 275 million records stolen. None of them were directly hacked. Their software vendor was. Every business running cloud tools for payroll, accounting, or client management carries the same exposure.
60% of small businesses that suffer significant data loss close within six months. Most of them had a backup. The problem wasn't the backup. It was that nobody tested whether it would actually work.
April's Patch Tuesday fixed 167 flaws including a SharePoint zero-day attackers are actively exploiting right now. The government gave federal agencies until April 28 to patch it. That deadline is tomorrow.
68% of employees use AI tools their employer never approved. They paste customer records, contracts, and internal docs into platforms your IT team has zero visibility over. It's called Shadow AI, and small businesses are the most exposed.
Your email filter has gotten better at catching phishing. Attackers noticed and moved to SMS. Smishing now accounts for 35% of phishing attacks, with click rates up to nine times higher than email.
A ransomware attack shut down a North Dakota water treatment plant for 16 hours in March 2026. If a public utility running on thin IT resources can get hit, so can your small business.
Microsoft's March 2026 Patch Tuesday fixed 79 vulnerabilities, including a zero-click bug that can make Microsoft 365 Copilot silently leak your data. If you haven't applied this month's updates yet, now's the time.
If you're still handling IT on your own or calling someone when things break, you're not alone. But there's a better way that saves money, prevents headaches, and keeps your business running.
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