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Tag: cybersecurity

Haloween picture - PHP is scary!

PHP – It’s Scary!

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog.

Critical Vulnerabilities, Legacy Code and the Cost of Looking Away The final post in STEP Software’s October Cybersecurity Awareness Month series Nothing says Halloween quite like discovering something dangerous has been lurking in your systems for years. Unfortunately, this year’s real-world cybersecurity horror story is not fiction. It is PHP, one of the internet’s most widely used programming languages, and a reminder that even familiar, dependable technology can harbour serious vulnerabilities. On October 21, 2026, the PHP development team released...

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Piggy Bank Budget

Cybersecurity Debt: Risks & Budget 2027

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog.

You know the risks are accumulating. Your budget committee wants to know why they should pay to fix them now. If you lead an IT team, this conversation probably feels familiar. You have unsupported software that needs attention, dependencies that have not been reviewed, legacy applications that nobody wants to touch, and security findings that keep getting pushed to next quarter. Your team knows these issues will not resolve themselves but when budget season arrives, the pushback begins. Cybersecurity debt can be difficult to explain to people who see only the cost of fixing it,...

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Broken chain and it

Your Software Supply Chain Is Bigger Than You Think

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog.

Protecting Your Information Starts with Knowing What Your Software Is Connected To Cyber Security Awareness Month can sometimes feel like an annual reminder to change your password, turn on MFA and stop clicking suspicious links. Those are still good ideas for the whole year, not just October. But for IT professionals, cybersecurity has become a much bigger conversation. Canada’s 2026 Cyber Security Awareness Month theme is “Your best defence is you.” This year week three focuses on protecting information, including information used when banking, shopping, and accessing online...

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Cybersecurity Lock

It’s Time for a Cybersecurity Health Check

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. 1 Comment on It’s Time for a Cybersecurity Health Check

Is Your Legacy or Custom Software Putting Your Business at Risk? October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, making it a good time for businesses to review more than passwords, phishing awareness and employee training. It’s an excellent time to revisit your cybersecurity strategy and shine some light on the software your business depends on daily. When was the last time your organization conducted a cybersecurity health check or security audit of its legacy software, custom applications and business-critical code? If you don’t have a definitive answer, it may be time to look...

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Bill C-36 and the Canadian Flag

Bill C-36: Is Your Business Ready?

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog.

What Canada’s Proposed Consumer Data Act Could Mean for Businesses and Employees Privacy legislation has a habit of sounding like something the legal department will worry about later. Until someone asks IT where the customer data is stored. Then things get interesting. Canada’s proposed Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act (PPCDA), represents a significant proposed modernization of Canada’s federal private-sector privacy framework. Introduced on June 15, 2026, the bill is designed to replace Part 1 of the Personal Information Protection and...

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Credential Sprawl

Credential Sprawl: The Hidden Risk Growing Inside Your Organization

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog.

Over the past several months, we’ve explored some of the biggest challenges facing technology leaders today. We’ve discussed technical debt, AI technical debt, digital sovereignty, workplace mental health, and the importance of maintaining a human-centered approach to technology. These topics may seem unrelated. The reality is, they all connect to a growing problem that many organizations are struggling to manage: Credential Sprawl It’s one of the most overlooked risks in modern IT environments, yet it has direct implications for cybersecurity, operational...

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AI Tech Debt

AI Technical Debt: The Hidden Cost, Can You Feel it?

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. 2 Comments on AI Technical Debt: The Hidden Cost, Can You Feel it?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly shifted from an innovation experiment to an operational necessity. Organizations are deploying AI copilots, automation platforms, customer service bots, analytics engines, and AI-generated software at record speed. But many businesses are discovering an uncomfortable reality: the faster AI is ‘adopted,’ the faster technical debt can accumulate. And you can’t ask AI ‘what were you thinking?’ because AI doesn’t think. It determines what the next token of code is(most likely) and outputs it (with some random variability) without thinking. This...

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System Failure

When Disaster Strikes: What to Do If Your Legacy System Goes Down

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. 1 Comment on When Disaster Strikes: What to Do If Your Legacy System Goes Down

For many organizations, legacy systems are still the backbone of critical business operations. They run billing, logistics, manufacturing systems, financial systems, payroll in many cases and even customer records. When faced with a cyberattack, software defect, or natural disaster, the consequences are immediate for businesses and downstream partners. Over the last five years alone, there have been several high-profile incidents showing how quickly a technology failure can become a business crisis. The lesson is simple: legacy systems don’t fail gracefully; and if you don’t have a...

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Vendor Chat

10 Cybersecurity Questions to Ask Your Software Vendor (Before You Sign Anything)

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog.

When you hire a software development firm, you’re not just buying code; you’re trusting someone to build a digital extension of your business. It’ll hold your data, power your operations, and (if done wrong) provide a nice open window for cybercriminals to crawl through. We’ve compiled a list of questions to help you ensure your custom software is not a cyber-liability. No technical degree required; you just need to know what to listen for. Q1: Do you follow a Secure Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)? This is software lingo for “Do you think about security from the...

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Document like your code depends on it

Document Like Your Code Depends on it!

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog.

The Most Important Thing Nobody Wants to Write Documenting software is the software developer equivalent to washing your windows. Ask any developer how they feel about documentation, and you usually get a sigh, a grimace, or possibly a vague promise that they’ll “get to it later.” Unfortunately, just like windows, later means, harder, more work and in the worst-case scenario, a complete renovation. When “later” turns into “never”, organizations pay the price with onboarding delays, security gaps, and in some infamous cases — catastrophic project failures. As most IT pros...

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