Tax and online scams continue to pop up this tax season. This week's discovery of the Heartbleed Bug could mean you are more susceptible to falling victim to these threats. Please read on for more details about the Heartbleed Bug and how to potentially protect yourself and your business.

Heartbleed Bug is the name of a recent security flaw that was found in OpenSSL software. This is the software that is used on roughly two-thirds of the servers on the Internet to secure communications between the server and the end-user. 

What the Heartbleed Bug does is allow an attacker to access the memory of any server running the OpenSSL software.  The server memory may contain the encryption keys that are meant to protect data.  With the encryption keys available through the Heartbleed Bug, any private data you shared with the server may have potentially been compromised.

Since large web providers such as Yahoo.com are known to be vulnerable to this attack, the best advice is to avoid logging onto sensitive servers this week (i.e., online banking).  This will give server administrators time to patch their systems. 

Many organizations have been testing and patching their servers since the discovery of the Heartbleed Bug on April 7th.   If you absolutely must perform a sensitive transaction on the Internet, our suggestion is to contact your IT Department first and/or use a Heartbleed vulnerability tester on the website before conducting your transaction.