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SoHo Integration www.soho-integration.com
With our expertise, you can reduce or eliminate the stress, challenges, and costs of trying to meet your own IT needs.

Running and growing a business can be one of the most rewarding things you do in life...it can also be one of the most frustrating and challenging accomplishments you embark on. As a small business owner myself, I understand that you need solutions that enable you to run your business the way you want without putting a strain on your two most valuable resources - time and money.

Ivanti put out a warning this week about a zero-day in Connect Secure that's already being exploited in the wild. If you...
10/14/2026

Ivanti put out a warning this week about a zero-day in Connect Secure that's already being exploited in the wild. If your business uses it for remote access, this is the kind of thing that sounds scary in a headline but shouldn't be a surprise if someone's actually watching your systems.

Here's the real question: do you know every piece of remote-access software running in your environment right now, and is someone tracking advisories for it? That's not a one-time project, it's a habit. Shops that have it end up patching calmly on a Tuesday afternoon. Shops that don't find out from a customer, or worse, from an attacker.

A basic security readiness check covers exactly this: inventory of what's exposed to the internet, patch status, and who's responsible for watching for exactly this kind of announcement. If you can't answer those three things off the top of your head, that's worth fixing before the next zero-day, not after.

We run these checks for businesses who'd rather not find out the hard way. Reach out and we'll walk through where you stand. --> https://security.sohomsp.net?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-ivanti-zero-day-is-a-patch-check-not&utm_content=the-ivanti-zero-day-is-a-bbce5fa7

Cybersecurity Awareness Month, week 3 check in.You don't need to be technical to spot trouble. Pick a quiet afternoon an...
10/14/2026

Cybersecurity Awareness Month, week 3 check in.

You don't need to be technical to spot trouble. Pick a quiet afternoon and run through this short list yourself:

1. Open your phone and laptop and make sure software updates aren't sitting there unapplied for weeks.
2. Check that the accounts you actually log into (email, banking, your main business apps) have two factor authentication turned on, not just available.
3. Ask yourself who still has access to your systems that shouldn't, old employees, a contractor you haven't used since spring, a vendor relationship that ended.
4. Look at your last backup date if you can see it. "Sometime last year" is not a backup plan.

That's it. No scare tactics, just four things worth five minutes each.

If any of those raise a question you can't answer confidently, that's exactly what our security checkup is for. We'll walk through it with you, plain language, no jargon.

Full article: https://soho-integration.com/cybersecurity-awareness-month-week-3-checklist/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=cybersecurity-awareness-month-week-3-wha&utm_content=cybersecurity-awareness-1edcfaa4

10/13/2026

"We don't write our own code, so we're not a target." I hear a version of this almost every week, usually from someone who feels pretty good about their IT setup otherwise.

Here's the problem. GitHub just tightened publishing rules for npm, the system a huge chunk of modern software quietly depends on, because attackers found a way to slip malicious updates into trusted packages. Not by breaking into your network. Not by tricking your employees. By compromising the pipeline upstream, before the software ever reaches you.

That means a vendor you trust, running code they trust, built on a package they trust, can hand you a problem you never saw coming. You didn't click anything. You didn't misconfigure anything. You just used the software you were supposed to use.

This is the part of security that doesn't get talked about enough because it isn't about your habits, it's about everyone else's. You can have great passwords, trained staff, and locked down firewalls, and still inherit risk from a vendor three steps removed from you.

The fix isn't paranoia about every piece of software you touch. It's knowing where your actual exposure sits: which vendors matter, which systems matter, and what happens if one of them gets quietly compromised tomorrow.

If you can't answer that for your own business right now, that's worth a conversation. Reach out and we'll walk through it with you.

10/13/2026

Follow up on the BEC story from last week, the one about the air force veterans who almost lost a wire transfer to a spoofed email.

A few of you asked the obvious question: could this have been stopped before it got to someone's inbox. Short answer: yes, probably.

Here's what we didn't get into last time. The email that fooled their bookkeeper wasn't actually sent from the real domain. It was spoofed to look like it, same display name, same signature block, close enough that nobody slowed down to check. That trick only works because the real domain had no DMARC policy set to reject those messages. Without it, mail servers will happily deliver a lookalike straight to the inbox and let the human decide whether it's real.

With DMARC enforcement actually turned on, not just published and ignored, that message likely never gets delivered. The receiving server checks it against the sending domain's policy, sees it fails authentication, and either quarantines it or drops it outright. The bookkeeper never sees it, never has to make a judgment call under pressure, and the wire never goes out.

This is the part that gets missed. A lot of companies think they have DMARC because someone set a record years ago. But if it's not set to reject or quarantine, it's basically doing nothing. It's like having a lock on the door that's never actually turned.

We've started checking this for clients as a quick gut check, takes a few minutes to tell you whether your domain is actually protected or just looks protected on paper. Worth knowing before it becomes your story. Is your DMARC configured properly? https://dmarc-check.sohomsp.net?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=we-saw-this-last-week-what-happened-afte&utm_content=we-saw-this-last-week-wh-fad9c861

Heads up: starting February 2027, Let's Encrypt is cutting SSL certificate lifetimes from 90 days down to 64. That means...
10/13/2026

Heads up: starting February 2027, Let's Encrypt is cutting SSL certificate lifetimes from 90 days down to 64. That means whatever renewal process you've got now will need to run more often, and if it's still a manual "someone remembers to renew it" process, you're about to get twice the chances to drop the ball.

This isn't a crisis. It's a known change with over a year of runway. But a year disappears fast when it's not on anyone's calendar, and expired certificates don't send a polite warning, they just break your site and scare off visitors with browser warnings.

If your certificates renew automatically today, you're probably fine and this is just a heads up to double check. If you're not sure how they renew, or if "SSL" is a word you've only heard your IT person say, now's the time to ask. Getting ahead of this is a quick conversation. Catching it after a certificate expires during business hours is not.

We're happy to take a look at how your certificates are managed and make sure you're set up for the shorter cycle well before it becomes mandatory. Reach out and we'll get it checked off the list.

PC shipments just dropped 20.1% year over year, the steepest decline since early 2023. Headlines are framing it as busin...
10/12/2026

PC shipments just dropped 20.1% year over year, the steepest decline since early 2023. Headlines are framing it as businesses pulling back on tech spending.

We'd read it differently. A lot of companies aren't buying because they're stretching the life of machines that should have been retired already. That feels like savings on paper. It usually isn't.

Older PCs cost more to run than people think: more help desk tickets, slower boot and load times eating into productivity, higher failure rates, and in a lot of cases, security patches that have quietly stopped coming. None of that shows up as a line item, but it shows up in your team's time and in your risk exposure.

We built a simple cost calculator to put real numbers behind this. Plug in your fleet's age and see what it's actually costing you to keep those machines running versus replacing them. Link in bio, or just ask us and we'll run it for you.

10/12/2026

If you've been searching "IT consulting Youngstown," here's something worth clearing up before you call anyone, including us.

Consulting and managed support are two different jobs.

A consultant comes in, looks at a specific problem or project, gives you a plan or a recommendation, and moves on. Think network redesign, a software migration, picking the right line-of-business tool. That's valuable work and plenty of good people do it well.

Managed support is different. It's not a project with an end date. It's someone watching your systems every day, patching and updating things before they become a problem, answering the phone when a laptop dies on a Tuesday morning, and generally being the team that keeps the lights on so your actual team can work.

A lot of business owners type "IT consulting" into Google when what they actually need is the second thing: a steady hand on the day to day, not a one-time report. Nothing wrong with that, it's just worth knowing which one you're shopping for so you don't end up with a binder of recommendations and nobody to implement them.

Where we fit: we're a managed service provider based here in Youngstown. We do take on consulting-style projects when they come up, but most of our clients work with us because they want ongoing coverage, not a one-off engagement. Help desk, monitoring, security, backups, the whole operation, handled continuously.

If you're not sure which one your business actually needs, that's a quick conversation, not a sales pitch. Reach out and let's figure out what fits.

Quick heads up ahead of this month's Patch Tuesday: Citrix released a fix for a critical remote code ex*****on flaw in N...
10/09/2026

Quick heads up ahead of this month's Patch Tuesday: Citrix released a fix for a critical remote code ex*****on flaw in NetScaler ADC and Gateway. If your business runs NetScaler for remote access or load balancing, this is one you want on your radar.

Here's the plain-English version. Remote code ex*****on means an attacker could potentially run their own commands on the device without needing a password first. NetScaler devices often sit right at the edge of a network, facing the internet, which makes them an attractive target when a flaw like this gets public attention.

The good news: a patch exists. The work now is making sure it actually gets applied, and applied correctly, not just queued up and forgotten in a ticket somewhere.

If you're not sure whether your environment uses NetScaler, or you're not sure who owns patching it, that's worth a five minute conversation this week. Most of the damage from vulnerabilities like this doesn't come from the flaw itself, it comes from the gap between "patch available" and "patch applied."

We're happy to take a look at your setup and confirm you're covered. No alarm bells, just good housekeeping before the next cycle of scanning and exploitation attempts picks up. Reach out if you want a second set of eyes.

"We'd never fall for a fake ad." Sure. Tell that to the people who just got their logins and MFA codes stolen by ads for...
10/09/2026

"We'd never fall for a fake ad." Sure. Tell that to the people who just got their logins and MFA codes stolen by ads for ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

Here's the setup: attackers built fake ad portals and sponsored search results advertising "official" AI tools. The pages looked right. The branding was right. The login flow even asked for your MFA code like a normal business tool would. People who are paid to be careful, smart employees at real companies, typed in their credentials anyway.

This is the part of the Contrarian Tuesday series where I ruin everyone's confidence: the "I'd never click that" crowd is exactly who these campaigns are built for. Nobody falls for the obviously bad email anymore. They fall for the ad that looks like every other ad, for a tool they already use, at the moment they're in a hurry.

MFA helps. It is not a force field. If someone can convince your team to hand over the code in real time, MFA just becomes one more thing they steal.

A few things that actually move the needle: lock down which AI tools and sign-in flows your team is allowed to use, keep browser and DNS filtering updated so known-bad ad domains get blocked before anyone clicks, and run phishing simulations that use fake tool ads, not just fake emails, because that is where this is actually happening now.

If you want a second set of eyes on whether your current setup would catch this, that's literally what we do. Reach out and we'll walk through it with you.

"We trust our team" is not a security control. It's a hope.New reporting from Intel 471 this week confirms what a lot of...
10/08/2026

"We trust our team" is not a security control. It's a hope.

New reporting from Intel 471 this week confirms what a lot of IT folks have been saying quietly for years: criminal groups are actively recruiting employees, on legitimate payrolls, at legitimate companies, to hand over access. Not hacking in. Being let in.

Here's the uncomfortable part. Most small businesses have zero technical controls for this scenario. No access logging, no least-privilege setup, no alerts when someone downloads a client database at 11pm on a Saturday. Just a handshake agreement that everyone on staff is a good person.

Most of your staff probably are good people. That's not the point. The point is that one disgruntled employee, one person in debt, one person who gets a DM offering real money for a password, is all it takes. And "we trust our team" does nothing to stop that, catch it, or prove to a client afterward that you tried.

Trust your people. Also log what they touch, limit what they can reach, and know the difference between an employee having access and an employee having unrestricted access. Those are two very different postures and most businesses are operating on the second one without realizing it.

If you're not sure which one describes your setup, that's worth a real conversation, not a guess. Reach out and we'll walk through it with you.

Address

701 N Hermitage Road, Building 2, Suite 17
Hermitage, PA
16148

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 8am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 8am - 4:30pm
Thursday 8am - 4:30pm
Friday 8am - 4:30pm

Telephone

+17246387646

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