Protecting Your Company from Cyber Security Threats |
Posted: April 27, 2017 |
Protecting a business isn’t the same today as it was in the past. Today, the major threats to a business’s security aren’t limited to stopping burglary and internal theft. Instead, things like hackers, malware, computer viruses and more that only exist in the digital realm are a huge threat to the security of all businesses. What you should be aware of is that it isn’t really a question of if you will face digital security threats. It’s a question of when. 90 percent of companies reported having been hacked. With that in mind, you must be proactive about protecting your company’s computers. Here are some strategies you should use to prevent hackers from succeeding. Train Your Employees Perhaps the most important thing you can do as a company to help thwart hackers and other digital treats is to properly train employees on what they need to do and not do to insure that a company’s data and computers remain secure at all times. This should include training on the proper ways to handle company data. It should include how to create an effective and secure password. It should include telling employees what to do if they leave their workstations. One major source of hacker intrusion results from information supplied by employees. While some of this is malicious, most of it is just pure negligence derived from ignorance of common IT security procedures. If an employee doesn’t know how to check an email to see if it’s legitimate, they may mistakenly supply confidential data to a hacker unwittingly. Even your social media accounts hosted by third parties aren’t free of these threats. 600,000 Facebook accounts are compromised on a daily basis. Perform Routine Digital Security Audits Protecting your computer systems and the sensitive data they contain requires pro-action. Sadly, many companies wait until a significant hack or data breach happens to make the proper security updates. It, however, doesn’t have to be this way. You should make an effort to spot vulnerabilities and remove them before a hack is even attempted. You can accomplish this by hiring a third party security firm to perform a security audit of your company’s network and computer systems. Such an audit typically includes the use of a white hat hacker. White hat hackers are hackers that look for vulnerabilities in computer systems with motive of giving advice on how to best apply security patches. They do not act maliciously like black hats do. Today, white hat hackers can make a lot of money working for security firms. Their experience and technical knowledge is often the key to discovering security flaws that would be overlooked by others. Have the Right Infrastructure and Software in Place Preventing hacks also means having the right tools in place to make detecting and warding off active hackers possible. For example, if your company transmits information via satellite communications, it may be a wise idea to have the technology in place to detect intrusions via Ka band frequencies. You should also have software designed to detect, record and prevent entry into the network be entities without the proper security clearance or with questionable origins. For example, if your company is in Southern California, an entity from China trying to enter your network could likely be a hacker or other malicious agent. However, without the software and tools in place to record this data and automate the restriction of access, such foreign entities may have free reign to do as they please without anything to stop them. Overall, whether you like or not, your company will more than likely get hacked. It will also probably be hacked significantly multiple times. With this in mind, you must take the steps necessary to insure that the security of your computers and networks are up to snuff. Not doing so is simply too risky.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|