Technology Assurance Group, Inc.

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Richmond, VA
Technology Assurance Group, Inc.

Want some TLC? Ask us how to get it! IT solutions providers that partner with your organization to be a trusted advisor.

Richmond based IT solutions provider that partners with our clients to be their trusted advisor.

10/12/2026

Ransomware attack: September 23.

Customer lawsuit filed: September 26.

Three days.

That's what happened to an Ann Arbor mortgage lender this month, after a ransomware group allegedly took 10,000+ files containing borrower names, Social Security numbers and addresses.

The timeline is the part worth paying attention to. Plaintiffs' firms now watch ransomware leak sites directly — so the legal clock can start before a business has even finished figuring out what was taken.

Four things worth having ready before anything happens:

📋 One named spokesperson, decided in advance
📋 A holding statement drafted on a calm day
📋 Your notification deadlines, written down
📋 Your attorney's number in the plan — next to the IT number

And one more: data you don't need anymore is pure liability. Most businesses are holding far more than they have a reason to keep.

Does your continuity plan cover the first 72 hours, or just the servers? → https://bit.ly/3Vqv15E

10/09/2026

⏳ Four days. Tuesday, October 13 is the last day of Year 1 pricing for business Windows 10 Extended Security Updates.

The pricing structure is the part people miss:

Year 1 → $61/device
Year 2 → $122/device
Year 3 → $244/device

Skip Year 1 and you can't just buy Year 2 later — you have to purchase Year 1 retroactively first. Waiting doesn't delay the cost. It stacks it.

And to clear up the headline that's been circulating: Microsoft did extend Windows 10 support to October 2027 — for consumers. That program excludes domain-joined and MDM-managed devices, which is basically every computer in a managed office.

Doable in four days:

✔ Count your machines
✔ Check which meet Windows 11 requirements
✔ Enrol the rest to lock Year 1 pricing

Not doable: ordering and deploying new hardware fleet-wide.

Start with the device count → https://bit.ly/3JFtLWE

10/08/2026

Your security now depends partly on companies you've never audited.

New research on the 140 vendors most relied on by financial services found:

📊 78% had at least one critical patch management failure
📊 54% carry a vulnerability CISA confirms is being actively exploited
📊 Confirmed breaches in that vendor pool went from 6 to 39 in one year

The research is finance-specific. The pattern isn't. Every business runs on payroll, CRM, payments, scheduling, document tools — each one a path to your data you didn't build and can't patch.

Here's the honest part: a 45-person business has almost no leverage over a software vendor's security practices. So the work shifts to what you can control.

Swipe for the five things →

The one that catches people: integrations you stopped using are still connected. That abandoned trial, that tool from a finished project — the access tokens are usually still live.

Thirty minutes in your Microsoft 365 admin console will show you the real list.

Nobody owning vendor risk at your company? That's the gap → https://bit.ly/4AQzsqA

10/05/2026

Cybersecurity Awareness Month starts today — and we'll say the unpopular thing about it.

Awareness is not a behavior.

Knowing phishing exists doesn't change what someone does at 4:40 on a Friday when an urgent email from the boss lands. Knowing a threat exists and having a practiced response are two different things.

So instead of training on topics, rehearse four decisions:
🔹 A request comes in to change vendor bank details — what's the verification step?
🔹 An MFA prompt appears that nobody triggered — approve, deny, or report?
🔹 Someone calls claiming to be IT and wants a password reset — what's the callback procedure?
🔹 A file needs to move somewhere unusual, fast — what's the approved path?

Ten minutes at a staff meeting. Four decisions, rehearsed.

Then say the part that matters most out loud: nobody will ever be in trouble for slowing down to verify.

Attackers don't count on ignorance. They count on people being uncomfortable questioning the boss.

More on building this properly → https://bit.ly/3VopQDk

10/02/2026

📘 New free guide: The SMB Security Baseline

Ten pages. No product pitches. Just the controls that separate businesses that absorb an incident from the ones that get taken apart by one.

Inside:
✔ Why software vulnerabilities passed stolen passwords as the #1 way in
✔ The four verification moments where money actually leaves a business
✔ How to test a restore in one afternoon
✔ A plain-English inventory exercise
✔ What “good” looks like at 25, 50, and 75 employees

We built it because most security guidance is written for technical people, and our clients aren't. That gap is where the risk lives.
Free to download and share with your team.

Questions about your own setup? → https://bit.ly/4yu4ZNz

09/04/2026

Five things we've learned helping local businesses figure out AI this year:

1️⃣ The first question is never "how do I use it?" — it's "what am I already exposed to?"
2️⃣ Banning AI doesn't work. It just moves it to personal phones where you can't see it.
3️⃣ The best first use case is boring. Summarizing documents. Drafting replies. Not a fancy chatbot.
4️⃣ "Hours saved" is a vanity metric. What capacity did you actually create?
5️⃣ The companies still using it six months later are the ones who wrote the rules first.

Want help building those guardrails? → https://bit.ly/4cDslHp

Have a great weekend!

09/03/2026

Quick checklist: is your team already using AI without you knowing?

✔ Ask what tools they've used this year that IT didn't set up
✔ Check installed browser extensions on a few machines
✔ See which AI note-takers are joining your video calls
✔ Look at third-party apps connected to Microsoft 365
✔ Ask finance what AI subscriptions are on the company card

If you find a few — that's normal. Your team was trying to work faster, not break rules. The fix is giving them a safe place to do it.

Read more → https://bit.ly/45rkGrZ

09/01/2026

Researchers just showed how attackers stole a quarter-million-dollar wire transfer using a company's own AI email assistant.

They compromised one regular employee's inbox, asked the built-in assistant who the executives were, had it write a phishing email in that employee's exact writing style, and worked their way up to the CEO's account. Then they asked the assistant to find pending payments — and redirected one.

No malware. Nothing for the spam filter to catch.

The simplest defense costs nothing: never change bank details based on an email. Pick up the phone and verify, every single time.

Want to know where your own gaps are? → https://bit.ly/4qi2QB4

08/28/2026

"I know close to nothing about technology, but TAG explains it in a way that I always feel like I know what's going on with our IT." — Chuck S.
That's the job, honestly.

We spent August writing about AI wire fraud, shadow AI, browser permissions, and the Windows 10 deadline. All real. None of it something a business owner should have to become an expert in.

Your IT partner's job isn't to make you technical. It's to make you informed enough to decide.

Want a clear, plain-English picture of where you stand? → https://bit.ly/4qi2QB4

Happy Friday, Richmond. 👋

08/27/2026

That browser extension someone installed in 11 seconds? It may be able to read everything on every page they visit — including email, CRM records, and financial dashboards.

The 6-step audit:
1️⃣ Inventory extensions on every work device
2️⃣ Check what permissions each one actually has
3️⃣ Remove anything nobody can justify
4️⃣ Restrict who can install new ones
5️⃣ Approve only tools with a clear business need
6️⃣ Re-check quarterly

Most businesses can knock this out in an afternoon.

Rather have it handled for you? → https://bit.ly/3UB8m64

Address

9327 Midlothian Turnpike, Suite 2C
Richmond, VA
23235

Website

http://www.tagva.com/

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