Tag: Network Security

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Casserly Consulting Blog

The Most Devastating Hacks of 2018… So Far

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Network security is a crucial consideration for every contemporary business owner, as there are just too many threats that originate from an Internet connection to be overlooked. One only has to look at what businesses of all sizes have dealt with, even within this calendar year, to gain an appreciation for how crucial it is that every business owner consider their cybersecurity.

Here, we’ve assembled a few statistics and examples to illustrate just how serious the threat of cyberattack can be, hopefully inspiring you to prioritize your company’s network security. Consider these cybersecurity figures:

  • In 2017 over 130 large-scale breaches were reported, a 27 percent increase over 2016.
  • Nearly 1-in-3 organization have experienced some sort of cyberattack in the past.
  • Cryptojacking (stealing cryptocurrency) increased 8,500 percent in 2017.
  • 100,000 organizations were infected with the WannaCry ransomware (400,000 machines).
  • 5.4 billion WannaCry attacks were blocked in 2017.
  • The average monetary cost of a malware attack is $2.4 million.
  • The average time cost of a malware is 50 days.
  • Ransomware cost organization’s over $5 billion in 2017.
  • 20 percent of cyberattacks come from China, 11 percent from the United States, and six percent from the Russian Federation.
  • Phone numbers are the most leaked information.
  • 21 percent of files are completely unprotected.
  • 41 percent of companies have over 1,000 sensitive files left unprotected.
  • Ransomware is growing at 350 percent annually.
  • IoT-based attacks are growing at about 500 percent per year.
  • Ransomware attacks are expected to quadruple by 2020.
  • 7.7 percent of web requests lead to malware.
  • There were 54 percent more types of malware in 2017 than there were in 2016.
  • The cybersecurity market will be worth over $1 trillion by 2025.

If that wasn’t convincing enough, what follows is just an assortment of the attacks that 2018 has seen (as of July). To simplify things, we’ve organized them by the intended targets: public (like individuals and government bodies) and private (such as businesses):

Public
January

  • The Department of Homeland Security was affected by a data breach that exposed information about 247,167 current and former employees.

March

  • Atlanta, Georgia was targeted by a ransomware attack called SamSam. This resulted in a massive problem for their municipal infrastructure. The ransom price given was $51,000, but Atlanta’s leadership refused to meet these demands. Overall, the numbers show that Atlanta has spent more than 10 times that number in the fallout of the attack. Some estimates place the actual cost of this event at nearly $20 million.
  • India’s national ID database, Aadhaar, leaked data of over a billion people. This is one of the largest data breaches in history. A user could pay 500 rupees, equal to about $7, to get the login credentials that allowed anyone to enter a person’s 12-digit code for their personal information. For 300 rupees, or about $4.20, users could also access software that could print an ID card for anyone associated with the database.
  • Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics company that U.S. President Donald Trump used to help his campaign, harvested personal information from over 50 million Facebook users without asking for their permission. Facebook hasn’t called this a data breach, but Cambridge Analytica has since been banned from using the service thanks to this event.

June

  • A hack of a U.S. Government-funded active shooter training center exposed the personal data of thousands of U.S. law enforcement officials. This also exposed which police departments aren’t able to respond to an active shooter situation.

Private
January

  • 280,000 Medicaid records were exposed when a hacker attacked the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. Among the information exposed were patient names, provider names, and full names for affected individuals.

February

  • An unsecured server owned by Bongo International, a company acquired by FedEx, leaked over a hundred-thousand files of FedEx customers. Some of the information leaked included names, drivers’ licenses, national ID cards, voting cards, and utility bills.

March

  • Orbitz, a travel booking site, fell victim to a security vulnerability that exposed 880,000 customers’ payment card information. There was also about two whole years of customer data stolen from their server.
  • French news site L’Express left a database that wasn’t password-protected up for weeks, despite being warned about the security issues regarding this.
  • 134,512 records regarding patients and financial records at the St. Peter’s Surgery and Endoscopy Center in Albany, NY were accessed by hackers.
  • MyFitnessPal, an application used by Under Armor, exposed about 150 million people’s personal information to threats.
  • The WannaCry ransomware claimed another victim in Boeing, which stated that “a few machines” were protected by Microsoft’s 2017 patch.

May

  • Thanks to Twitter storing user passwords in a plaintext file that may have been exposed by internal company staff, the social media titan had to force hundreds of millions of users to change their password.
  • An unauthenticated API found on T-Mobile’s website exposed the personal information of all their customers simply through the use of their cell phone number. The following information was made available: full name, address, account numbers, and tax IDs.
  • A bug found in Atlassian development software titles Jira and Confluence paved the way for hackers to sneak into IT infrastructure of several companies and one U.S. government agency.
  • Rail Europe, a popular server used by American travelers to acquire rail tickets, experienced a three-month data breach that exposed credit card information to hackers.

June

  • A marketing company named Exactis had 340 million records stolen from it, but what’s most shocking about this is that they had accumulated information about nearly every American out there. In response to the breach, there was a class action lawsuit made against the company.
  • Adidas’s website was hacked, resulting in a loss of a few million users’ personal and credit card information.
  • A hacker collective called Magecart initiated a campaign to skim at least 800 e-commerce sites, including Ticketmaster, for sensitive information.

Clearly, if these lists are any indication, companies of all sizes need to commit to maintaining their network security, holding it to a higher standard. For assistance in doing so, you can rely on the professionals at COMPANYNAME. We can design and implement security solutions to protect you from threats like these, and others that may rear their ugly heads. Give us a call at PHONENUMBER to get started.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Hackers Target Major Sporting Events

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There are literally billions of sports fans in the world, and the popularity of these events brings in big money; and big money typically attracts hackers. Using all types of methods, there has been a history of hacking in almost every sport. Today, we take a look at some of the most famous hacks that have shaken up the sports world.

The World Cup
The FIFA World Cup is one of the, if not the, most popular sporting events in the world. Held once every four years, it attracts the attention of billions of people. Since the event is held every four years, it gives the host city a lot of time to get ready for possible hacker attacks. In fact, each new venue spends years and tens of millions of dollars ramping up on their cyber security.

The 2018 event held in Russia proved to be one of the most successful insofar as there wasn’t a major hack of the tournament in any way. It’s not a coincidence that typically state-sponsored Russian hackers are well known to be at the forefront of a lot of the major international sporting hacks. Fans that visited Russia from abroad during the World Cup were warned (mostly by their own governments) that they needed to be diligent not to fall into any tourist traps that would leave their cyber welfare in the hands of the thriving ecosystem of hackers that call Russia home.

Previously, in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the World Cup website was taken down by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and thousands of visitors had their data breached through sophisticated phishing attacks. Each World Cup, especially the next one that will be held in the Middle East (Qatar) for the first time, is a goldmine for hackers.

The Olympic Games
International competitions like the Winter and Summer Olympic Games grab the eye of world for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately for athletes, coaches, and fans from all over the world, they also catch the eyes of hackers. Again, since these events are held every four years there is a long time for administrators to get ready, but that doesn’t stop those inside the host cities (or often outside of them) from trying to get over on the hundreds of thousands of people that show up to watch the events.

At the past Winter Olympics, held in Pyongyang, South Korea, the opening ceremonies were hacked by what turned out to be a Russian hacking collective. The hack caused delays in the festivities and infiltrated the games’ website, so administrators, fearing significant data loss, took down the website. Initially they had masked the attack as coming from North Korea, but it didn’t take long for professionals to ascertain that the hacks were retribution for Russia’s prohibition from the games as a result of a decade-long antidoping policy that found state-sponsored use of performance enhancing drugs; a revelation that many had suspected for decades.

While local hackers spoofed Wi-Fi and targeted athletes and guests during the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Russian hackers from “Tsar Team” and “Fancy Bear” were busy hacking into the Olympic databases to gain access to athletes’ personal information. They subsequently have released some of that information, including information about gold medal gymnast Simone Biles, and tennis legend Venus Williams.

NFL
In the United States, it doesn’t get much bigger than the National Football League. In fact, one study showed that about one-third of all church-going males don’t go to church from Labor Day to New Years. Nearly 30 million people tune in to watch the NFL each Sunday. With this popularity comes attention; and hackers have used this popularity to their advantage.

In 2016 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s Twitter feed was hacked with a message that announced that he had passed away. The perpetrator happened to be a teenager from Singapore. In February 2017, 1,135 NFL players had their personal information stolen by hackers when the NFL’s union, the NFLPA, was hacked. Hackers made off with 1,262 people’s personal information, their financial data, their home phone numbers, their addresses and more.

In 2009, a man named Frank Tanori Gonzalez was given an extremely lenient sentence for hacking into the standard-definition communications feed at Super Bowl XLIII with a clip from an adult film that aired unedited throughout the greater Tucson area (the game was held in Tampa, FL).

MLB
Major League Baseball makes over $10 billion a year, and they do a phenomenal job of protecting their brand online. MLB makes a lot of their money in media and has made it a point to prioritize cyber security for league business. With individual teams handling their own cyber security, there have been small hacking cases, but unlike most other sports the biggest hacking scandal in baseball history was carried out by a team executive.

From 2013 to 2014, St. Louis Cardinals’ former scouting director, Chris Correa, repeatedly accessed the internal communications server of former division foe Houston Astros. The Astros had moved to the American League from the National League after the 2012 season, and they had hired former statistician Sig Mejdal from the Cardinals. When Mejdal left St. Louis he turned in his laptop. Using the information he got off this laptop, Correa figured out Mejdal’s new password and started entering the Astros network. For his indiscretions Correa got 46 months in federal prison.

NBA
The most famous hack in NBA history is hack-a-Shaq, which was a strategy used to limit Shaquille O’Neal’s effectiveness by making him shoot free throws (with which he struggled mightily), but there have been a few other hacks that have affected NBA players. The most notable, was NBA player Ty Lawson having his computer hacked and held his personal data for ransom in 2016.

Another situation was what is called a catfishing scam that involved NBA forward Chris Andersen and model Paris Dylan. A woman named Shelly Chartier had used multiple people’s online messaging accounts to manipulate Anderson and Dylan into bad situations. Andersen ended up being raided by the Douglas County sheriff’s department because Dylan was 17 at the time and any digital possession of lewd material would be legally considered child pornography. After investigators uncovered the scheme, Chartier was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Anderson continued his NBA career and Dylan was able to put the situation behind her and is now is an Internet model.

PGA
Recently, the PGA of America held the 100th PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. As the golfers were navigating their first rounds, the PGA was under attack by hackers. A message was sent to administrators that read, “Your network has been penetrated. All files on each host in the network have been encrypted with a strong algorthym[sic].” The hackers also sent a Bitcoin wallet number with instructions on how to deposit money.

The PGA of America immediately hired a third-party IT security firm to solve the problem. Since security professionals from all over the world consider these extortion attempts to be futile against the diligence and expertise of security professionals, the line is usually to not pay and hope that the data can be recovered without the encryption key. Only time will tell how the situation is resolved.

Other sports leagues and athletes have had to deal with major problems from hackers over the years, including the English national rugby team’s website being hacked by the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), and four-time Tour De France champion Chris Froome’s performance data was hacked as a rival team was convinced he was using performance enhancing drugs.

There are dozens of ways that you can fall victim to hackers. If your business isn’t already doing all it can to protect your digital assets, the time is now. Reach out to the IT professionals at COMPANYNAME for more information on the best way to protect your business from outside (and inside) threats at PHONENUMBER.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

UTM is a Strong Solution to Ward Off Hackers

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When your employees think about hackers and network security, do they picture some cloaked or hooded figure in a dark room typing away at a keyboard? Do they see a recluse living in their mother’s basement? Popular culture has given many users a false sense of reality regarding hacking attacks and the culture surrounding them, and it can come at the detriment of your business.

While there are, of course, amateur hackers who aren’t necessarily well-versed in how to do it, there are other, more professional hackers who “know their stuff,” so to speak. This is similar to just about any kind of profession or industry. You have the hackers who have no idea what they’re talking about, and you have the seasoned professionals who know the ins and outs of how to infiltrate a network. Unlike other industries, however, the cybercrime industry is effective regardless of the proficiency of those involved with it.

If you think about it, this makes sense. It doesn’t matter what kind of threat is installed on your computer. A virus is a virus, and malware is malware. It’s troublesome at best and dangerous or downright threatening at worst. Therefore, if you don’t take network security seriously, you could put the future of your business at risk.

Traditional Hacking Attacks
Many users might look at hacking attacks and think about the more traditional threats. This includes the typical viruses and malware that users associate with suspicious online activity. These threats can have varying effects, but they generally make life difficult for businesses and individuals alike. This is about the extent of the average user’s knowledge regarding hacking attacks. They know they are bad, but they might not know the real ramifications of such attacks.

Emerging Threats
Nowadays, security threats are much more advanced and dangerous, capable of crippling entire networks. Some examples are dedicated spear phishing attacks in which hackers take on the identity of someone close to your organization, tricking users into downloading the wrong email attachments or sending a wire transfer to an offshore bank account. Other times, it’s installing a backdoor on a network that lets hackers access a network at their leisure. The most dangerous of all–ransomware–literally locks down your business’ files and demands a ransom for their safe return, putting businesses between a rock and a hard place. Suffice to say, these advanced threats aren’t always identifiable by the average user, and some can’t be identified until it’s far too late and damage has already been done.

Don’t let your business remain in harm’s way any longer. COMPANYNAME can equip your business with solutions that can both prevent hacking attacks and respond to them quickly and efficiently. We do this through the use of a Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool that combines enterprise-level firewalls, antivirus, security blockers, and content filters together to create a comprehensive, preventative, and proactive way to keep your network safe. It’s the best way to approach network security, hands-down.

To learn more about how you can get started with a UTM, give us a call at PHONENUMBER.

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Cybersecurity Requires Flexibility to Changes

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Security is always changing due to the volatility of online threats and vulnerabilities. Things have changed so much over the past decade that solutions that worked back then are so outdated that they put your business at risk today. This brings into question what you should expect in the years to come. What are some of the threats that your business can expect to face in the future?

For reference, this information is from a study performed by Cisco. The study references the findings of 3,600 data security professionals from organizations such as Talos and others from all over the world.

Malware Has Grown More Autonomous
Early types of malware relied heavily on the user actually clicking on a link or downloading an attachment to install itself on their computer. Nowadays, malware doesn’t take the risk that the victim will know better than to click on a link or download something bad. Instead, a ransomware might be more network-based, meaning that all it takes is a simple mistake to spread to your entire infrastructure. Cisco suspects that this type of threat could potentially grow so widespread that it could take over the Internet.

Ransomware Is About More Than Just Money
Ransomware used to be all about making money and disrupting operations. It was a way to make money to fund further hacking attacks against even more victims. People would pay up because they were too scared to imagine losing their data. Trends are showing that hackers are increasingly more interested not in the financial side of ransomware, but with the destruction of businesses. Ransomware is being actively used by criminals to put an end to any business unfortunate enough to be hit by it.

Threats Are Avoiding Detection More Effectively
Ultimately, any online threat’s level of danger is equivalent to how easy it is to hide. The easier it hides, the more dangerous it can be. Ransomware can now hide in encrypted traffic to make itself much harder to detect. It can even use cloud-based applications and services to implement a command and control attack, all hidden within normal traffic.

Watch Out for Internet of Things Devices
The Internet of Things–a large collection of connected devices that all perform various functions–has grown at a considerable rate. Since Internet of Things devices are difficult to patch properly, they can provide backdoor access to an infrastructure. Since many IoT endpoints aren’t secured properly, your company network could potentially be opened up to all kinds of threats.

Security changes every day, but the one thing that never changes is that COMPANYNAME can help your business secure its infrastructure. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Three Give-Aways that Your Security Approach Needs a Change

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It only makes sense that you would want only the best security for your organization. It’s natural to want to eliminate risk entirely. However, this simply is not a realistic viewpoint to take where your security is concerned, and it can even contribute to greater security issues as a company holds out for the best solution.

This is no way to do business, but it can be hard to identify if you, yourself, are actually trying to bite off more than you can chew. To help, here are three signs that you are actually hurting your company and its security by trying too much and focusing on the wrong things.

1. Setting Standards Too High
Of course there needs to be organizational standards where security is concerned. However, it is important to recognize that ‘perfection’ simply isn’t going to be attainable. Many companies will be committed to their ideal vision of a solution to the point that, until that golden standard is found in reality, they won’t implement what is seen as an inferior option, leaving themselves completely vulnerable. What’s worse, some of these companies will actively find issues with an entirely workable solution, prolonging the process.

This can have the added ill effect of creating organizational paralysis among the workforce. Operational paralysis is simply the lack of movement toward change, improvement, and advancement in a business, due to an impression among the staff that any action will ultimately fail. This makes it particularly difficult to enact any change, whether it’s to your security or otherwise, as your staff will not be motivated to stick to it.

2. Waiting For The Perfect Storm
Many business owners have the tendency to find any reason to wait before starting a project of any kind, including a security initiative. They might want more data to support their proposed strategy, or want another project to be wrapped and put to bed, or want more money or time to commit to it. Any of these reasons may keep them from acting, or from even entertaining an idea.

The thing is, there will never be the perfect time to start a project, and something or other will always be there to get in the way and create friction. However, when it concerns something as important as security, you need to get something workable in place before the worst happens. After all, you can always continue to improve upon things.

3. Lack of Priorities
Again, it is only natural to want to be prepared for everything, but this too often translates into a company spreading themselves thin and not really being prepared for anything. Furthermore, there may just not be the resources available to reinforce a company against all threats at once. In cases like these, it is only too easy to overestimate the risk of some events. To counter this, there needs to be a frank and pragmatic look at your particular situation.

For example, a business located in a dry, arid area is far more likely to experience a fire than they are a flood. Therefore, it statistically makes more sense to prepare for a fire first, and wait until a little later to make the preparations for the flood. Weighing your security risks should follow the same process, which requires a resistance to the knee-jerk reaction to fix everything immediately.

While maintaining your IT security is obviously an important task, it is equally important to strategize your approach to this maintenance. COMPANYNAME can help you handle it. Call PHONENUMBER for more information today.

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The IoT Can Be Very Useful, but Also Risky

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You might be surprised to hear how the scope of the Internet of Things has increased over the past few years. These connected devices are all over the place. In order to ensure that your business isn’t affected in a negative way by these IoT devices, you’ll need to consider the many risks and how you will respond to them.

What is an IoT Device?
Essentially, any device that connects directly to the Internet or sends data to and from the Internet through another device is considered an IoT device. A smartwatch that connects to Wi-Fi, or a fitness tracker that shares data fall into this realm. From smart appliances, like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home, to Internet-connected coffee machines are all Internet of Things devices. While the data they share might not always be extremely sensitive, they could open up other ways for your sensitive data to be reached.

Ask yourself – does this device connect to the Internet or network in some way? If so, it doesn’t mean it is a risk, but it does need attention.

What are You Risking?
When you’re putting together your business’ policies regarding the IoT, you should consider what assets you’re willing to leave vulnerable. It essentially boils down to what you’re willing to let your employees access. If your employees have access to a lot of data, you’re increasing the risk involved with IoT devices in the office. In much the same way, you can control how much data is at risk by limiting which employees can access it. It’s a great way to ensure that the Internet of Things poses a minimal threat to your business and its data.

On the other hand, it’s important to remember that IoT devices will still pose a threat in some way, simply due to the amount of them. There will always be too many factors to take into account to guarantee safety from any and all devices. Therefore, you should consider as many as feasibly possible. The data’s sensitivity is chief among these considerations, as well as the employee’s particular role within your organization. If they are mostly separated from confidential or sensitive data, then perhaps they can use basic IoT capabilities with little consequence. Granted, this assumption varies between industries, so be sure to make it clear what you expect from your staff in your employee handbook.

Train and Prepare Your Staff
Security isn’t something that can only come from one employee–rather, it “takes a village,” so to speak, and everyone must be mindful of security practices. This is incredibly important for the Internet of Things, but everyone needs to be on board–not just management or leadership. All employees need to be aware of the cybersecurity policies used by your company, as well as the various risks associated with the Internet of Things. Plus, it never hurts to be aware of even the most benign warning signs of common security threats.

Lead by Example
If you want your employees to prioritize security for your workplace, start by taking the first steps yourself. After all, you can’t expect your employees to do something that you yourself don’t do. Management should be able to set an example for their workforce, and this is how the IoT is prepared for most effectively.

Is your business utilizing any IoT devices? COMPANYNAME can help your business prepare for this connected technology revolution. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Do You Use 2FA? If So, You’re in the Minority

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Two-factor authentication, also known as 2FA, is a very beneficial addition to consider for your cybersecurity. However, a research study unearthed a few surprising takeaways that indicate that 2FA may not be adopted as much as one might expect it to be.

Researchers at Duo Labs, using data compiled by Survey Sampling International, designed a survey that would mimic the patterns that could potentially be seen in different regions concerning the adoption rate of 2FA. The results of this survey were striking, as they revealed that only 28% of those surveyed–designed to match up to the entirety of the US population–had adopted 2FA. Over half of the participants had never even heard of 2FA before the survey was administered.

The researchers were also surprised to find that, of those who knew about 2FA, 54% were voluntary adopters, and only 20.8% had been introduced to 2FA in their work environments. However, reflecting upon the number of applications and services that now prompt users to set up some form of 2FA, this is hardly surprising. Yet despite the relatively high number of voluntary adopters, less than half of these respondents used 2FA wherever they could.

However, there were a few results that showed a bit more hope for the utilization of 2FA. First of all, an analysis of the state of 2FA that compares the authentication options in 2010 to those in 2017, shows that more people are relying on more secure methods. For instance, the use of hard tokens (or a physical device used to confirm the bearer’s identity) decreased by half in the span of time the analysis covered. This indicates an increased awareness in the potential security risks that a hard token presents–all it would take is for one of these tokens to be lost or stolen to render 2FA ineffective.

The real takeaway from the results of this research is an insight into user behavior. Namely, convenience and simplicity were important factors when a user formed an opinion of the different approaches to authentication. This helped to contribute to security tokens being ranked as the most trustworthy form of 2FA by 84% of respondents. While there was an awareness that these tokens had their issues (including the risk of losing them, as referenced above) there was still a demonstrated trust in their reliability.

Despite all this, the sad truth persists that too few people are utilizing 2FA to secure their personal and business devices. With any luck, this will change in the near future, as network security has been thrust further into the public consciousness due to the repeated breaches and attacks that have made headlines as businesses rely more heavily on computing resources.

Do you have 2FA in place to protect your business resources? For help implementing it and other crucial security measures, reach out to COMPANYNAME at PHONENUMBER.

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How Remote Monitoring and Management Can Help Your Business

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As a small business, your assets are limited more than you’d like them to be. You have a budget that yearns for more flexibility, and there are only so many hours in the day to accomplish all of your goals. Thankfully, in an era that’s more connected than any that came before, modern technology provides solutions to businesses that need to get a little more value out of their budgets. One of these solutions is called remote monitoring and management.

Imagine having a persistent computer problem that you don’t know how to solve. It’s been bugging you for a while now, but you don’t have an in-house IT department to fix the problem. Imagine having the ability to log into a service portal and put in a ticket explaining what the problem is. A technician will see this ticket, send you a quick reply, and arrange for a time to remote into your computer to solve the issue for you. Imagine how convenient this would be!

Remote monitoring and management is a great tool that allows your business to take advantage of the many wonders of the connected world, all for the sake of keeping your business running as smoothly as possible. We’ll give you a few examples of how your organization can take full advantage of remote monitoring solutions.

Update and Patch Implementation
Have you ever had to install patches and security updates on every single computer in your office? It can be a frustrating and time-consuming task, especially considering how often these updates need to be implemented. Remote monitoring and maintenance allows our technicians to remote into your computers and deploy the patches and updates all at once, without an on-site visit.

Security Monitoring
Have you ever been concerned with network security? You’re probably wondering how you can keep threats out of your infrastructure when you don’t know they exist. One of the best ways you can do so is by having technicians remotely monitor your network for security troubles. It’s not even limited to just threats, either. We can remotely monitor your network for any troublesome developments, like signs of hardware failure, that could create large issues down the line.

Quick and Easy Service
Waiting around for someone to fix your computer wastes time that could be better spent on other tasks. You can take back this time by having a technician remote into your devices in order to resolve issues, rather than waiting for a technician to arrive on-site to resolve them. Sure, there are more pressing issues that require on-site assistance, but most issues can actually be solved remotely.

Could your business use remote assistance from time to time? COMPANYNAME can help with that. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Security

Your Business Should Be in the Headlines for the Right Reasons, Not for a Cyber Attack

b2ap3_thumbnail_business_ramifications_400.jpg Today’s headlines are peppered with stories of major companies and institutions falling victim to a cyberattack. As a business owner, what’s your response to these gut-wrenching stories? If you write them off as fear mongering and believe that these attacks can never happen to your SMB, well, you’re wrong. They can and it’s up to you to prevent such a disaster.

One reason why it’s so important to shore up your company’s network security is because the ramifications of a breach extend well beyond the sensationalism surrounding a news story. Take for example one of the biggest stories of hacking in recent memory; the revelation made public last December that Yahoo had more than one billion of its accounts compromised, dating all the way back to 2013. While the headlines focused on the plight of Yahoo and the negative effect this would have on the tech company’s value, what didn’t get reported is how millions of Yahoo users were negatively affected by having their sensitive information exposed to hackers.

In the same way, seeing to your company’s network security goes beyond protecting your corporate image from a negative headline. It’s also about protecting all of those who have entrusted you with their sensitive data. This includes customers and vendors that have provided your business with their financial information, as well as employees that each have a wealth of their personal information connected to your HR department.

We’ve established that there’s a lot riding on your network security and that it’s your job to make sure this is taken care of. If you don’t currently have a security plan in place protecting your company from a data breach, where do you even begin? Fortunately, you don’t need to be an IT security expert or have a computer science degree to implement adequate security measures. As is the case with the many vital responsibilities connected to your business, you can outsource the protection of your network to the professionals, such as the IT technicians at COMPANYNAME.

That said, IT security is such an important and comprehensive matter that it’s not something that you should outsource and then disregard. In fact, IT security works best when everybody in the company understands that they have an active role in its upkeep. Yes, everybody. We’re talking from the C-level executives down to the cleaning lady who connects her smartphone to Wi-Fi. If everyone in your company understands how to avoid the snares laid by hackers, then the cake that is your network security measures will be topped with the icing of best practices.

Remember, securing your network from cyberattacks isn’t something that you have to do on your own. COMPANYNAME is here to help, and we can do so by implementing proven and comprehensive network security solutions like our Unified Threat Management tool, as well as remote monitoring and maintenance in order to detect and take care of any threats that may breach your defenses. We’re also available to equip your staff with the means and know-how to better understand cybersecurity.

For assistance in all of these areas of security and more, give us a call today at PHONENUMBER.

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Security

20% of Customers and Revenue are a Lot to Lose From a Single Data Breach

b2ap3_thumbnail_business_data_breach_400.jpg Data breaches are common problems for businesses of all shapes and sizes. In fact, they often have huge repercussions that aren’t initially seen in the heat of the moment. How can you make sure that a data breach won’t negatively impact your business, even well after you’ve fixed the initial problem?

Cisco, for example, claims that out of all companies that experienced a major data breach in 2016, over one-third of them lost more than 20 percent of their customers, opportunities, or revenue. This clearly shows that your business has far more than just data on the line when it comes to cybersecurity. Simply put, by not taking measures to keep your organization secure, you stand to put the future of your business itself at risk.

This makes sense, especially when you consider a consumer’s natural reaction to a poor experience with a specific vendor or brand. If you were a customer at a store that experienced a major data breach (one in which your financial information was stolen), would you still want to shop there? Many organizations will reassure their customers that the vulnerability has been resolved, and some might even offer to make amends for their careless handling of customer data. Yet, sometimes even this isn’t enough to retain customers, and often times, you won’t find this out until it’s too late.

As a small business owner, can you imagine what it would feel like to lose as much as 20 percent of your current clientele? Large organizations might have enough resources and offerings to make the loss seem more manageable, but chances are that a 20-percent loss would be a huge hit for any smaller organization.

Furthermore, it’s likely that such a loss of customers, opportunities, or revenue would affect long-term growth. If your organization loses 20 percent of its customers, that’s not just lost business for you–that’s a whole bunch of customers who won’t recommend your organization to new clients. What’s worse, they may even tell others about your business, but not in the way that you want them to. Before you know it, you’ll have former customers telling their contacts all of the ugly details about their experience with your business, data breaches notwithstanding.

In other words, not only does a data breach represent a loss of revenue, but also a loss of potential resources that could be utilized to further advance your business in the future.

Thus, a relatively small issue could transform into a major problem that puts the future of your business in jeopardy. Cisco also found that the following problems were concerning for organizations that experienced a data breach:

  • Cyber threats in 2016 increased in power and sophistication.
  • Cybersecurity efforts by organizations aren’t able to investigate all of the alerts they get in a single day (56 percent is the average).
  • However, despite cyber attacks growing in complexity, hackers still utilized “classic attack methods seen in 2010.”

Cyber threats continue to evolve into bigger, more dangerous threats that are harder to counter and prepare for. Despite this fact, it’s still your responsibility to make sure that any potential data breach doesn’t spell the end for your enterprise. It’s clear that, in order to guarantee the success of your business’s future, you need to implement powerful and focused security solutions designed to prevent breaches in the first place.

COMPANYNAME can help your business implement technology solutions designed to limit breaches and manage risk more effectively. With a Unified Threat Management device and remote monitoring and management service, you will have little to fear. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.