Azure Outage Causing Problems

I am trying to get a lot of tasks done today and am being thwarted by Microsoft's Azure outage. This is not a knock against Azure as I didn't think that many services used it. It is only during an outage that you realize how much you use that service and how it affects you.

I received an e-mail from my employer letting me know that the Azure outage made it impossible to contact our travel department by phone. They suggested using e-mail should we need to talk with someone. Having taken a few trips for work, I know that e-mail is a great alternative as they are quick to respond. I didn't worry about it and kept about my daily tasks.

Next my wife informed me that Costco might be a great place to get refills for a consumable item we need to replace which is filters for our furnace because it is running more with the cold weather. I didn't want to hop in my car and so I tried to log onto the Costco website. In white letters on a blue background it says that some customers are experiencing site performance problems. While some of the site works, not everything does. For instance I can't set my local store correctly. Even though I enter my zip code, it only shows me stores in the state of Washington. Eventually they will figure it out. Of course I do have the option of running down there in my car should it be an emergency.

Several days ago I received a letter from a previous employer saying that my employee information got hacked and they are providing me with free identity protection from Cyberscout. While it makes sense to be wary of a company you have not heard about, they are legitimate and owned by TransUnion, one of the major credit bureaus. In the course of setting up my account, they need to send a code to my phone for multi-factor authentication. While the phone number I provided worked once, it didn't send the second code. To finish setting up the account I had to call their service center.

Sometimes computers greatly simplify our lives. Other times, such as in the case of downed systems, they really slow us down. Fortunately we have old backup technologies like e-mail, phones and driving to a local store to help us get stuff done.  

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Among other things, October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. I received an e-mail this morning alerting me to this fact and I found it timely given my post yesterday about my wife's Instagram account being hacked. The e-mail went on to provide 4 tips to stay safe online. I thought I would share them with you:

1. Recognize and report phish - While you may not have anyone to report the Phishing e-mail to, hopefully you can recognize suspicious e-mails and not click on any links in them nor respond. Interestingly I had a phishing text message this morning that claimed to be from UPS. I expected them to be delivering my new skis and the text indicated a problem. Fortunately my skis arrived just before the text or I might have been tempted to respond. Instead I deleted the message and reported it as junk.
2. Use strong and distinct passwords - Since I have been forced to create longer passwords I have embraced long phrases. I then replace characters with numbers and symbols to make them harder to guess. Instead of something simple like "skibum" I now use phrases like "iAmAt0ta!skiBum" where the "o" into total is replaced by the number zero and the "l" is replaced by the exclamation mark. It is easy to remember and tough to guess. For the record, that is not any of my passwords, just an example.
3. Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) - When you have the chance to turn on MFA, do so as it it adds another layer of security. Today I had to log into one of my credit card accounts and the usual MFA code grew from 6 characters to 8. That surprised me but is significantly more difficult to guess than the 2-digit codes I use 95% of the time.
4. Keep your systems updated - This is important because companies are always learning about security vulnerabilities in their systems and update them frequently to lock out bad actors. If you are using an old version of your phone or computer's operating systems, you could be vulnerable to hacking. Always make sure you have the latest software. Make sure you have automatic software updates set up on your devices to help ensure this.

Staying vigilant about your online security will help save you from potentially bad situations in the future. Unfortunately nobody is immune and the attacks will continue to get more realistic and tough to spot. Paying attention to all online communication is all the more important.