It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...(For Hackers)

Akins IT • November 30, 2017

I have a problem and started my Christmas shopping in August. However, peak shopping season usually begins with black Friday and hackers are on high alert because they know that there is a huge increase in online shopping and credit card transactions. My biggest shopping tip is not to "Drink and Prime"- in other words, don't shop on Amazon when you've had a couple of glasses of wine. They make it way too easy to buy things with just one click. But, on to more relevant tips to keep your identity safe from hackers this holiday season!

Don't process transactions over public wifi connections: It's OK to shop and browse at coffee shops and libraries but try to avoid making purchases when connected to those networks. It's better to save the actual purchase and transaction for when you're back home on your own private internet connection.
Be weary of hyperlinks and attachments. Hackers send out phishing scams all the time that imitate legitimate coupons and offers from real businesses. For example, one phishing email might look like it's coming from Apple to preorder the new iPhone when in reality it has one or two letters changed and is a phishing attack.
Be careful with holiday ecards. Sure, it might be a harmless JibJab video of your family dancing in elf costumes, but it also might be malicious. Use extra caution and don't open anything that looks suspicious.
Update your passwords. I know it's hard to remember a million passwords, but try not to use the same password for everything. Otherwise, once it's compromised, all of your accounts will be in jeopardy. Try to avoid using simple and common words and include a special character, number, and capital letters.
Do your research. Before processing your credit card on a site, dig a little and make sure it is a legitimate business. Some illegitimate businesses pop up during the holiday season and "take orders" but never send out the goods.
Review your bank statements. Remember to check these regularly to look for any purchases that may not have been made by you.

Happy Holidays!!

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AWS stumbled this morning. Here’s why multi‑cloud keeps you moving.

By Shawn Akins • October 20, 2025

October 20, 2025 — Early today, Amazon Web Services experienced a major incident centered in its US‑EAST‑1 (N. Virginia) region. AWS reports the event began around 12:11 a.m. PT and tied back to DNS resolution affecting DynamoDB , with mitigation within a couple of hours and recovery continuing thereafter. As the outage rippled, popular services like Snapchat, Venmo, Ring, Roblox, Fortnite , and even some Amazon properties saw disruptions before recovering. If your apps or data are anchored to a single cloud, a morning like this can turn into a help‑desk fire drill. A multi‑cloud or cloud‑smart approach helps you ride through these moments with minimal end‑user impact. What happened (and why it matters) Single‑region fragility: US‑EAST‑1 is massive—and when it sneezes, the internet catches a cold. Incidents here have a history of wide blast radius. Shared dependencies: DNS issues to core services (like DynamoDB endpoints) can cascade across workloads that never directly “touch” that service. Multi‑cloud: practical resilience, not buzzwords For mid‑sized orgs, schools, and local government, multi‑cloud doesn’t have to mean “every app in every cloud.” It means thoughtful redundancy where it counts : Multi‑region or multi‑provider failover for critical apps Run active/standby across AWS and Azure (or another provider), or at least across two AWS regions with automated failover. Start with citizen‑facing portals, SIS/LMS access, emergency comms, and payment gateways. Portable platforms Use Kubernetes and containers, keep state externalized, and standardize infra with Terraform/Ansible so you can redeploy fast when a region (or a provider) wobbles. (Today’s DNS hiccup is exactly the kind of scenario this protects against.) Resilient data layers Replicate data asynchronously across clouds/regions; choose databases with cross‑region failover and test RPO/RTO quarterly. If you rely on a managed database tied to one region, design an escape hatch. Traffic and identity that float Use global traffic managers/DNS to shift users automatically; keep identity (MFA/SSO) highly available and not hard‑wired to a single provider’s control plane. Run the playbook Document health checks, automated cutover, and comms templates. Then practice —tabletops and live failovers. Many services today recovered within hours, but only teams with rehearsed playbooks avoided user‑visible downtime. The bottom line Cloud concentration risk is real. Outages will happen—what matters is whether your constituents, students, and staff feel it. A pragmatic multi‑cloud stance limits the blast radius and keeps your mission‑critical services online when one provider has a bad day. Need a resilience check? Akins IT can help you prioritize which systems should be multi‑cloud, design the right level of redundancy, and validate your failover plan—without overspending. Let’s start with a quick, 30‑minute review of your most critical services and RPO/RTO targets. (No slideware, just actionable next steps.)