October is known as Cyber Security Awareness Month and ends with a bang on Halloween, where the adults dress up in scary costumes and the children run wild on a sugar rush. But just like any other time of the year, your network faces nightmares from cybercriminals, system errors and more. Time to shine a light on the seven most sinister terrors that haunt sysadmins. Welcome to the tech nightmares.



Nightmare on Ransomware Street

Coming into work and finding out that our infrastructure was hit with ransomware in the night and they got into backups. Imagine the horror. Meltdown, SWAPGS, Zombieload, and others have demonstrated the power of insidious ransomware threats. These outbreaks managed to make it clear just how much of problem ransomware has become.

Being able to successfully track down ransomware issues depends on various factors, but you won't be able to mitigate threats if you haven't got your baseline right. The importance of gaining complete visibility into your network environment affects numerous IT processes, and Cybersecurity is one of them.

A DNS Horror Story

What is your worst tech nightmare? Is it DNS? Yes, it's always DNS. IT professionals know the pitfalls of this platform all too well. If there is a problem and you can't seem to figure it out there's always one solution to look to: It's always DNS. The Domain Name System is used to scare your pants off. In the meantime, it also converts a computer's hostname into an IP address on the Internet.

Dawn of the Audit

Nobody likes an audit. Even in the best of outcomes, audits take up valuable time that can be used to improve services. You have to run through checklists and spreadsheets to review the audit requirements. Worse, a negative IT audit can feel like a report card on your ability as an IT pro.

Always be prepared for the auditors. They strike without warning and they have no mercy. The best defense against negative IT audit results? Know your IT environment inside out. What better way to start off by gaining complete visibility with Lansweeper's agentless discovery capabilities , right?

Zombieland

The threat of zombies is looming around every corner. A zombie is a computer connected to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker or computer virus and can be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction. Botnets of zombie computers are often used to spread e-mail spam and launch denial-of-service attacks. Most owners of zombie computers have no idea their system is being used in this manner. Talk about spooky!

The Backup Massacre

One of the things that strike fear in the hearts of IT professionals: the look on a user's face when you have to tell them their data is gone for good. The ultimate fright? Failed Hard Drives on the file server, the backup server, and the offsite backup server at the same time.

Backups are the cornerstone of any good disaster recovery plan so if you have a decent backup workflow in place, congratulations - you are one step nearer to protecting the data your business relies on. The only defense is a strong offense: make sure you are regularly backing up your data.

Zero-Days Later

As an IT professional, Zero-day vulnerabilities are here to keep you up at night. Zero-day attacks are attacks targeting a vulnerability that has yet to be patched. These exploits are responsible for some of the most devastating cyber-attacks and pose a genuine threat to your data and privacy. We've seen plenty of Zero-day vulnerabilities causing night sweats this year: WhatsApp, Google Chrome, and even Internet Explorer suffered a haunting Zero-day that was actively exploited in the wild.

The Haunted Printers

Truth be told: you are probably not all that fond of your printers. They always seem to be out of order when you need them. No paper, no toner. Do you even have an accurate printer inventory? Imagine all printers set to print single-sided, highest quality with color by default. The shiver is real.

Unlike most other tech devices, printers have moving parts and supplies that must be replaced regularly. As such, a good amount of maintenance is required to have a printer working and printing effectively. Making it a device that requires time and money to work over time.

Compiling and maintaining a complete, accurate, and up-to-date network inventory can help you to pro-actively avoid many tech IT nightmares. You can't protect what you don't know you have. Leveraging an IT Asset System of Record will boost your productivity so you can enjoy your well-deserved night sleep in peace.