Custom Internet Services LLC

10/12/2026

Manufacturing businesses, are you aware of cybersecurity blind spots lurking in your operations? Learn how to strengthen your defenses!

Adjusting to ongoing challenges from AI, endpoint visibility and regulation.

10/11/2026

Are the days of posting AI content without anyone knowing coming to an end?

Anthropic is adding an invisible watermark to text written by new Claude models.

You won't see the watermark. It is created through patterns in the words Claude chooses, so copying the answer into Word, an email or a website won't remove it. Some editing may leave the mark intact too.

Anthropic plans to provide tools that can estimate whether Claude helped write a piece of text.

Those tools cannot identify the person who used Claude, show what they asked or tell how much of the finished document was written by them.

A document may carry the watermark even if Claude was only used to rewrite part of it.

Businesses can keep using Claude for drafts and editing, but staff should know that its involvement may be detectable. Anything sent to a client or published under the company name still needs to be checked for accuracy.

If your team is already using AI at work and you're not sure what rules you need, let's have a chat.

10/11/2026

You've thought about what you'd do in a cyberattack, but have you practiced it? Sit your key people down for an hour and talk it through: files encrypted Monday morning. Who do we call first? Can we reach our contacts with email down? Note what nobody could answer.

10/09/2026

Your business email is worth more than your bank account.

Stolen Microsoft 365 credentials remain the most common starting point for SMB breaches in 2026, and the reason isn't just that attackers can read your messages.

Once someone has access to your email, they can reset the password for every other account tied to that address.

Your bank, your accounting software, your CRM, your cloud storage.

Email is the master key to your entire digital business.

What attackers typically do once they get in:

▶️ Set up mailbox forwarding rules so they keep seeing your replies after you change the password

▶️ Send invoice fraud emails to your clients from your real account, often changing wire transfer details

▶️ Sit for weeks, learning your business, before making a move

Three things that meaningfully reduce this risk:

✅ Use phishing-resistant MFA where possible (FIDO2 hardware keys or Windows Hello for Business). Authenticator app prompts are better than nothing, but they can still be bypassed.

✅ Set up Conditional Access policies in Entra ID to block logins from countries you don't operate in.

✅ Review your mailbox forwarding rules monthly. In Outlook, go to Settings > Mail > Forwarding. If you see a rule you didn't create, that's a sign your account is compromised.

The monthly audit takes 5 minutes and it’s one of the highest-leverage security habits you can build.

10/08/2026

MFA fatigue is one of the most common attacks on small businesses today, and most owners don't know it by name.

The attacker already has the password (bought from a leak or stolen from another site). They log in. The MFA push hits your employee's phone. They tap "Deny." The attacker tries again 10 seconds later. Then again at 2am. Then during lunch. Eventually someone taps "Approve" just to make it stop. The attacker is in.

Uber got hit this way in 2022. Cisco too. It still works on small businesses every week because passwords keep leaking and the push prompt looks identical to a real login.

Three things close the gap, and none of them are expensive. Switch your team from "tap to approve" to number matching, which both Microsoft Authenticator and Duo support out of the box and takes about 10 minutes to enable in your tenant. Then turn on geo-blocking or impossible-travel rules in your identity platform so logins from countries you don't operate in get blocked before the push ever fires. Last, give your team one rule: if you get an MFA prompt you didn't ask for, deny it AND report it. The report is what catches the attacker mid-attempt.

The attacker doesn't need a fancy hack. They just need someone tired enough to tap "Approve."

10/06/2026

Microsoft's phishing report for the first quarter of 2026 shows how much phishing has changed in the past year.

In three months:

-8.3 billion phishing threats detected
-QR code phishing up 146% from last year, with a 336% spike in March 2026 alone for QR codes hidden inside emails
-Phishing pages hiding behind CAPTCHA puzzles jumped 125%. CAPTCHAs make the pages look real AND stop security scanners from checking them.
-10.7 million business email compromise attempts in one quarter

Hackers moved from text to images, codes, and CAPTCHAs because text-based filters can't read them. Even an expensive email gateway misses most of this.

If your phishing training still shows examples of misspelled emails from "Nigerian princes," you're teaching your team history, not security.

What to do this month:

-Update your phishing training. If it doesn't include QR code emails and fake CAPTCHA login pages, you're testing 2023 skills against 2026 attacks.
-Tell your team one rule: any QR code that arrives in an email is suspicious. No exceptions.
-Ask your email security vendor what they catch for image and QR phishing. Get the answer in writing.

Train your team for the phishing they'll actually see this year.


https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/qr-code-phishing-surges-146-percent-as-microsoft-detects-and-analyzes-8-3-billion-phishing-threats-in-q1-2026-attackers-are-changing-tactics-to-bypass-security

10/05/2026

Still on Windows 10? Migrating to Windows 11 is a critical security opportunity. With support ending, staying put creates ransomware risks. Turn your migration into a security upgrade.

Windows 11 migration is inevitable as Windows 10 support ends, and unsupported systems create major security and ransomware risks. Acronis explains how to use this migration to review backups, strengthen cybersecurity, and ensure data stays recoverable.

10/04/2026

October 13, 2026 is the end of support date for Office 2021.

After that date, Word, Excel and Outlook will continue to open, but Microsoft will stop providing security updates, bug fixes and technical support.

Because the software keeps working, it can remain on company computers for months or years after support ends.

Any new security problems found in Office 2021 may be left unfixed.

Not sure whether Office 2021 is still in use? Ask us to check, and we'll talk you through the replacement options.

10/03/2026

Microsoft will never call you about a virus on your computer. Neither will Apple. If a pop-up or a caller says your machine is infected and wants you to call a number, install something or pay, it's a scam. Close it or hang up, then call your own IT provider if you're worried.

10/02/2026

If an email asks you to download a tool to "view a document," stop and verify before clicking.

A growing attack pattern is tricking employees into installing real IT software on their own machines.

The software is called RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management), and it lets IT companies remotely control computers for support purposes.

Tools like ConnectWise ScreenConnect, Datto RMM, SimpleHelp, N-able, and LogMeIn are all legitimate and digitally signed by reputable vendors.

That's exactly why attackers love them. Antivirus software doesn't flag them as malicious because they aren't malicious. They're just being installed by the wrong person.

In February 2026, Microsoft documented a campaign that hit 29,000 users across 10,000 organizations.

The lure was a fake "IRS Transcript Viewer" email. The download was actually a repackaged ScreenConnect installer.

Once an employee ran it, the attacker had full remote control of their machine.

The same trick is being used with fake Zoom invites, fake Teams calls, and fake DocuSign emails.

A few things you can do:

▶️ Ask your IT provider to maintain an allow-list of approved RMM tools. Anything outside that list gets blocked from installing automatically.

▶️ Train your team that "download this viewer to see your document" is almost always a phishing attempt. Real documents don't require a new program.

▶️ Audit your endpoints for RMM software your IT provider didn't install. If you see something unfamiliar, flag it.

If you're not sure what RMM tools are running on your team's computers right now, that's the first thing to check this week.