Threat Hunt

Threat hunting is basically exactly what it sounds like. This is running a fine-toothed comb through all of your information systems and actively trying to catch something before an issue happens. Threat hunting can be looking for suspicious emails, access requests, or any suspicious activity with your accounts or employee requests. Sometimes the threat is already present and finding it before an emergency arises is more important than anything. 

Clean Email

We mentioned email above, and for good reason. Cleaning your email and looking through each one as it comes in can be a huge benefit for security purposes. Old emails can pile up and threats can be hard to spot in thousands of unopened emails. Looking at each email as they come in can also be beneficial to your entire organization. You can alert your I.T. team of the suspicious email and the rest of the company will know to look out for it. People looking to gain access to your company typically target more than one employee at a time. 

Offline Data Backup

On the chance that information is destroyed, stolen, or inaccessible for any reason, an off-site/offline data backup can save your company. Lost data can mean lost revenue and trust in your organization. Once this is gone, it most likely won’t come back or it will take an unthinkable amount of time for your company to regain its trust. When small businesses do fail, it is also because a loss of trust, not simply revenue/cost of recovering from a cyber attack. 

We offer the FileMax Data backup and this can help your company on a daily basis or in a time of need. These files are easily accessible so that your employees are never without access to important information. Read more here.

Update and Scan

Updating applications and scanning data are key to having a secure system. Updates aren’t typically different for end users, but they fix bugs and security holes that have been recognized or compromised in the past. Scanning is a type of threat hunting and we discussed why that’s so important. To reiterate: you’ll catch a problem before it actually becomes a widespread emergency for your entire company. 

Check back soon for another blog on how to continue to keep your information safe.

Weakest Link

Assessing cybersecurity is an important way to understand what steps need to be taken to have the best cybersecurity possible. While assessing, it is important to identify the weak link and find ways to strengthen it. It has been discovered that 95% of security breaches are due to human error, which shows that the weakest link of cybersecurity can be people.

This can be solved by preparing your employees and training them on cybersecurity. If an employee is not prepared to look out for signs of security breaches, they cannot be expected to be able to prevent those situations from happening. Something as simple as someone having a weak password can possibly lead to a whole business getting hacked. Focusing on secure passwords and only giving necessary people access to crucial information can help to decrease the risk when a hacker accesses accounts. 

Unlimited Attempts

When trying to gain access to a business’s information, hackers have unlimited chances to get in. Computer programs can be set up to be constantly trying to guess the passwords that protect important information. It only takes one correct attempt for your information to be breached. This puts an even higher emphasis on making sure everything is locked down. Being aware that your information is constantly being targeted is important when setting up a security system. 

False Sense of Security

Being overconfident with cybersecurity can greatly negatively affect a business. If you are overconfident, there are things that can go wrong because you may not be prepared. 90% of businesses are confident that their cybersecurity works efficiently, but the percentage of businesses that actually are prepared is much lower. If the risk cannot be assessed, then the correct measures cannot be taken to protect information. One thing that can help to cure this false sense of security is being proactive with cybersecurity and admitting that there is work that needs to be done to protect your business’s information. 

All of this information is great when it comes to knowing why cybersecurity is so important. It only takes a single misstep for your security to be lackluster. Crossing everything off of the list of a good cybersecurity system is important to always keep your information protected. To find out how we can help, click here.

Competition in the United States has quickly accelerated to unprecedented levels in terms of technology. This is due to the opening of global markets, companies continuing research and development efforts, and mergers and acquisition activity. Competitiveness also has been affected by the quantity and quality of I.T. investments sharp increase that has been experienced recently. The companies that have spent the most on information technology are the companies that have the competitive edge.

A rapidly evolving market also keeps the tech world competitive. Something can be the newest and greatest product, and soon after it can be irrelevant based on a new product coming to the market. This can lead to having to change technology as a company quickly and frequently. As frequent as these changes may happen, investing in the information technology processes that help your company run more efficiently will be worth the money. They don’t get outdated very quickly and they can help your team thrive from a time and quality perspective. 

There are many benefits to being a company that invests in information technology, especially in recent years. Investing now will also help to go into the future. Some of these advantages include more innovation, improving the quality of business, increasing profits, and so much more. It can be intimidating as a business to take the steps to become a pioneer in investing in information technology. Having a forward-thinking mind and looking into the future will help commit you to better processes now. Allowing your unique process to differentiate your brand is a great way to stay on top. 

Having a clear process for information technology can also help lead to success. There are multiple steps that can be taken in the process of competing on digital processes. To begin, assess your current processes and needs in order to determine how to better your company. The second step would be to install a consistent technology platform. This will allow for a routine or common ground for your employees to always rely on.

The next step would be to come up with better ways of working. Finally, use the platform from the second step to grow business innovations widely and reliably. There are few teams that have taken this opportunity in stride, while many others are reluctant about the process of competing digital processes. If your company can have a clear process and use information technology to compete against others, it will most likely succeed. 

We only work with the companies that are ahead of the game, so contact us today so that you can stay on top in your own field. 

What is Cybersecurity?

Cyber security is the collective methods, technologies, and processes to help protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computer systems, networks, and data, against cyber-attacks or unauthorized access. Protecting all organizational assets from both external and internal threats is the main purpose. There are many different contexts that cyber security can be divided into. 

The division can be into departments such as network, application, and information security. All are meant to protect your company’s most valuable asset, its information. All three of these branches protect things like your network, software, hardware, and keep your data private. 

How a breach can happen

Hackers have developed a pattern to assure that they get what they want. The first thing that happens is that a potential hacker does their research. They spend time researching where your cybersecurity’s weak points are. Once they find your weak spot, they attack. The actual attack can include gaining access to an organization’s infrastructure through the vulnerabilities they found when researching. The data breach can be the most crucial part of the entity being attacked. The people targeting your company are typically after things like intellectual property, customer/client information, and employee/customer financial information.

Ways to prevent a breach

Preventing cybersecurity breaches is something that every organization should invest their time and money into. This can help to protect important information the organization has to protect. There are tips that can help to prevent cybersecurity breaches, such as using cybersecurity software, securing hardware, backing up and encrypting data, and investing in cybersecurity insurance. Along with this, password managers and technology like two-factor authentication can help in being the first line of defense against security breaches. All of these tips will help lock down your information so that it is secure at all times. 

Solutions to a breach of cybersecurity

If you’re unlucky enough to experience a cybersecurity breach, here are some solutions that are available to minimize the damage. The first is to investigate the breach thoroughly and have a plan in place to deal with the breach. The plan should immediately focus on stopping the breach. Knowing as much about the breach as possible is crucial in order to prevent another attack in the future.

Notifying customers after the breach has been stopped is a required solution because most states have reporting laws in place. If customers are not notified in the correct way, there are repercussions that would affect the business in a negative way. The last solution would be to determine what was lost and find out if the backup data was accessed.  For more information on this, click here. 

The cybersecurity world can be a difficult one to navigate, but once you know, the better off you’ll be. Follow these tips and contact us for any questions about how we can help with locking down all of your systems. 

Of those 43%, 60% go out of business within 6 months of the attack. Protecting your most valuable asset, your information, is extremely important in today’s world. 

There is a clear question to be posed after reading the alarming statistics: How does your company stay safe? There is one trend in the world of cybersecurity that is picking up major steam, a zero-trust policy. In short, a zero-trust security policy gives limited access at every level of your company. Access needs to be granted for information to be viewed, edited, or accessed in any way. This is in hopes that if a breach does occur, limited amounts of information are available to the hacker. Today, we’re discussing why this has become so popular.

Protection at all Levels

This has to do with the limited access. You’re not handcuffing your team, you’re protecting them and the rest of the company. If a mid-level sales associate doesn’t need access to accounts that they don’t work on or deal with, they don’t need access like a C suite executive might need access to different sets of data. This isn’t just a “the top of the company has all of the power” play either. C suite employees, Presidents, and owners might not have access to certain things that might not concern them on a day-to-day basis. 

Access Must be Granted

In a zero-trust policy, everyone is considered to have malicious intent, even if they’re in the house. How do you determine who grants access? This is typically determined by your IT team, but the owner of the file/document wouldn’t be a bad start. It can also depend on what type of information you’re dealing with, so the head of your finance department may have to give access to everyone to view certain information. If you’re a marketing agency, a direct point of contact with a client may hold the power to grant access to that specific client’s information and files.

This one is up to you, but be careful about who you give access to and who you give permission to grant access to. 

Nobody is Safe

This can mean two different things, and we’re getting into both of them. First, we established that no company is safe from being targeted for an attack, so that’s why zero-trust is becoming more and more popular. Second, nobody within your company is safe. Cybercriminals do not discriminate. If you’re an executive, you will be targeted. If you’re an intern to a new higher, you will be targeted. Being aware of this fact can open your eyes to why this new policy may be needed to keep valuable information safe. 

Easier to Identify

As soon as a breach is recognized, the first questions asked are: “What do they have access to?”,  “How did they get in?”, and “How do we put a stop to it?”. If your company has a zero-trust policy implemented, all of this can be answered a lot easier. If you see what information is being taken, you can see who had access, whether it was granted or it was the person who granted the access. This will then answer what they have access to.

Is it a person with limited access to the information that they seem to be after, or is it the owner of all of the information with all of the access? Where to block them off can be a case-by-case thing, but at the very least, the person who they may be pretending to be can be cut off from getting access to anything else until after the breach is solved. 

Information is your most valuable asset and cybercriminals are after it every day. Don’t let your company be the next target, click here to contact us to find out how we may be able to help. 

Having help that is readily available to you is beneficial in helping businesses that don’t have I.T. knowledge. Providing high-end I.T. services will make it so that you and your team can stay focused on what they do. They won’t have to allocate time and resources to solutions when problems arise, they can just keep working. A managed network service should help expansion, provide confidence, and be easy to get solutions. 

Help Expansion

When you own a small business, there is little room for error if you are thinking about growing your company. Having a managed network service should allow you to focus on your craft. Growth can also be emphasized while all of the information technology solutions are being handled by people like us. 

If you have an important deadline to meet and your email is down, you shouldn’t have to worry about getting it up and running again. If you don’t have time to backup your data in a safe environment, that will already be taken care of. All of these solutions will allow you to be your best and in times of a crisis, there will be no need to worry. 

Have Experts Always there

With an expert there to help you, you can sleep easy at night knowing that there’s nothing to worry about. Not every issue is a major crisis. Having an expert can help when it comes to simple advice or small issues that might become bigger later on.

General maintenance can also be a feature in some managed network services. This will ensure that all of your equipment will be running smoothly at all times. This can help the productivity of your company and employee morale. You and your employees will be less stressed with hardware that is always in the proper shape. 

All in One Service 

One of the biggest benefits of a managed network service is that you will have all of your information technology solutions in one place and have the same people managing them. Any service from cybersecurity to printers will be taken care of by one company. This will allow you to have one contact point for everything that is being managed. With everything all in one place, it will feel as if you have your own personal I.T. department for a fraction of the cost.

If a managed network service interests you, click here. Or contact us today to find out more.

So the question is, what makes them stay? If you pay competitive salaries, it’s the company culture that will help you keep your talent. Do your employees not only like to work for you, but are they excited to show up on a daily basis? Do they form relationships? Are the valued members of a team that works together for a greater goal? All of these are important to culture and today, we’re discussing why. 

Good Environment

This has to do with employees wanting to come to work and enjoying themselves. If you provide a good environment to work in, people will be more likely to enjoy their work. A good environment can mean having a bright office with lots of natural light, an open concept if you are communicating with each other frequently, or any type of setup would encourage an efficient and enjoyable work environment. 

Another part of creating a positive environment would be incorporating incentives and team-building activities. These small incentives and activities are important to take a break from everyday work life and to get to know who you’re working with. They can help with getting to know each other and building mutual trust among your team members. 

Trust

It was already mentioned, but a good culture builds trust in everyone. Why would you leave a company when you enjoy being there and trust everyone you’re around? Having faith in working together will make work less stressful and easier to get things done. Knowing you can count on the people around you can make everyone more confident in the job they are doing.

Safety

Safety at work is something you may not always think about but has become more important over the last year. While working in an office is typically very safe, making sure you are physically and mentally healthy is also important. A good company takes care of its employees and treats them accordingly. 

While personal safety is important, virtual safety is also important in the workplace. Keeping employee and client information secure is crucial, and having secure passwords is a great place to start. A password management system can help generate secure passwords and make sure none of your private information is at risk. To find out how we can help with that, click here. 

Better Results 

A good culture yields a better product for your company in the end. If you put the effort into developing a culture that people want to be a part of, then you will have no trouble maintaining talent. All of the efforts that companies are putting into developing a sense of belonging is in an effort to better the end results for the company’s clients. If you treat people right and encourage a good environment they will work harder and enjoy doing it for your company. 

Identify What is Lost

So, you have experienced a data breach, and your company has lost some vital information. The next step is to find out what someone gained access to and what information they took. This will confirm the seriousness of the attack. If they gained access to entry-level information, you might not be as too worried. If they obtained more sensitive, classified information, then you may have a reason to worry.

The type of information your company handles is also important. If you’re handling sensitive information such as social security numbers, tax information, or anything of that nature, the breach will always be considered serious. This should always be taken into consideration if a breach ever happens to you or your business. 

Update Security

Though you think you have proper security measures in place, it’s possible that there are unknown issues or cracks in your security. Your business probably doesn’t need a complete overhaul of its security structure unless you’ve been breached before. You may have to just tweak what is already in place in order to make things secure again. Our advice is to assess the breach and act accordingly depending on what was taken and how the information was obtained by an outsider. 

Another key piece is instant response time during an attack. Information won’t stop being taken. You must resecure your accounts to be sure that whoever was taking information, no longer has access to it. 

See What Remains of Your Data

Now that the breach has been stopped and you know what they have taken, see what you can salvage or what is left. The best way to do this is to backup your data on a separate device if you aren’t doing that already. If your information is already backed up in a secure location, there’s a chance the hacker wasn’t able to harm this asset. This is a best-case scenario because you will still have access to all of your data. The hard part will be getting back or protecting what was taken already. 

Re-educate your employees

After you’ve done everything you can immediately after being attacked, it’s time to address your entire team. Getting everyone to understand just how important protecting your company’s or client’s information is, should be a top priority. This will prepare them for whatever comes next in the unfortunate event that your company does experience some sort of data breach. 

Implement a better plan

Lastly, get a better plan. If there was a breach, obviously something didn’t work. Creating a better strategy so that this doesn’t happen again is probably the most important thing to the survival of your business. If a second attack doesn’t cripple your company financially, it can ruin your reputation. People are trusting you with their most valuable assets and it is your job to protect them. If you break that trust more than once, it’s likely clients won’t be too understanding. 

All of this can be a lot to take in, but having a plan for the worst-case scenario is better than scrambling to stop a breach in progress. Contact us today to see how we can help in preventing an attack and securing your information. 

Cloud

Typically, the cloud is used for storage. In a broad scope it is used to deliver all kinds of I.T. and computer service needs. These can extend to servers, network support, software, and data management/analytics. “The cloud” is physically stored on a server farm. This is a much more cost effective way to host or store information. The cloud has the ability to store much more information and data than you would be able to by storing hard copies of all of your information. This will cut down on the physical space that you need and potentially cut costs for your business. In today’s world there seems to be more reasons to have cloud services than to not. 

Breach

Breaches are related to cyber crimes. The breach is not just when information is released or stolen. It is when there’s unauthorized use of any sort of system that you may be using. If a password is leaked, if someone has access to your personal, professional or sensitive information, someone has access to your information that shouldn’t have it, you have experienced a breach. 

Our past blogs have gone into detail on how to avoid these and what to do if your company does experience a breach. 

Encrypted Data

Encryption is a security measure that can hide sensitive information. A person has to be given access or a way to access encrypted data. To a person without the correct security clearance, the information will appear scrambled or unreadable. This is typically done by software today so that maximum security is ensured. 

Zero Trust 

Zero Trust refers to a security policy that is increasing in popularity as time goes on. A classic security model usually subscribes to the thought that if someone is within your organization, they can be trusted. A zero trust policy assumes that everyone trying to access any information has malicious intent.  This means that clearance and permission needs to be granted to access information, even internally. Certain levels of security clearance are given. For example, a regular associate might not need access to important financial information, so they don’t have it and need to be cleared by an I.T. department or someone higher up in the organization. 

This was covered in a previous blog of ours, so if this sounds like something you would need, you can read more here. 

All of these terms can help you understand how important cyber security is and some technology that can be beneficial to your company. Check back soon for more cybersecurity information and tips. 

Read the address

One of the most common ways that employees are being targeted is through email. The hacker will use a similar email address as an advisor of yours. For example, if your boss’s real email address is “johndoe@123.com” the fake email address will read “johndoe@!23.com”. At a quick glance, they appear to be the same thing. You might not think twice about responding to a request.

Typically, these emails will contain strange requests. Common phrases are that they are in a “closed door meeting” or they can “only trust you” with whatever task they are asking. The great news is that these are typically very easy to catch. Once you know to look for suspicious emails, you simply need to read who the sender is. Alerting your I.T. team or someone in charge is good practice. This way, everyone can look for fake emails in their inbox.

What if there is a breach?

If you have found yourself in the position where you may have caused a breach, stopping the breach from reaching more and more people is what’s most important. Your next move is to contact whoever is in charge of your cybersecurity. They need to alert everyone in your organization and handle the situation accordingly.

Fearing repercussions of being the cause of a breach is understandable, however, alerting your cybersecurity team quickly can keep the problems to a minimum.

Use the tools available to you

We have laid out some general instances and examples, but if your employer is prepared for preventing a data breach, they will likely have a plan in place. Learn the plan! If you know their protocols, then following them shouldn’t be too complicated. If there isn’t mandatory training when you first start, or regular meetings about what to do or how to get started with securing professional accounts, it may be a good idea to ask. Ignorance is hardly ever an excuse, so use what your company has in place so that you will never be the one to lose information for your company. 

For more information on how we can help, click here. 

Security 

A password manager is much more secure than managing passwords yourself. People typically use the same password or a variation of the same password for all of their accounts across a variety of platforms. This puts all of your accounts at risk. A password manager will auto generate a unique password for every one of your accounts keeping them all secure.

Master Password

With a password manager you only have to create one strong password. This is referred to as a master password. Remembering just one secure password ensures the security of everything else keeping you protected. 

Autofill/update 

One of the best features a password manager has is an autofill and update feature. The autofill will automatically fill in a username and password when logging into the account. With most password managers, a “trusted device” will not require a master password for more convenience. This feature can be turned on and off because requiring the master password each time you log into an account is more secure. 

The update feature will keep your passwords up-to-date. If an application requires a password change and your current password doesn’t meet all of the requirements, the password manager will automatically generate a new one. This will not affect your master password, so there will be no work required from you. Password manager helps take care of everything. 

A password manager can not only keep your information safe, but ensures the security of your entire network. This can be implemented across your whole organization, so every employee keeps company information safe. Information is being targeted now more than ever and protecting it should be the most important thing to you.

For those that don’t know, a zero trust policy involves a lot of protection to your accounts. Any person trying to access an account will have to go through a strict verification process to get into the account. Some of the verifications will include two factor authentication and possible approval from an administrator on the account. If you are within the network parameter or not, the strict guidelines will apply. Today, we will go into detail about why a zero trust security policy may be a good idea.

Assume everyone has bad intentions 

This is the basic principle in the zero tolerance policy. Assume everyone is out to get you. Do not blindly trust anyone. This eliminates trust within an organization, but not in a detrimental way. Trust is nonexistent rather than lost in a zero trust architecture. With everyone having to be given access when trying to view, edit, and search through your company’s information, there’s no need to worry about who may have access to your accounts. This way, anyone with access to your network will be approved and people with lackluster passwords or don’t worry about security within your organization won’t be a liability. 

Multi-Factor Authentication

Two factor authentication is a great way to securely log into accounts and grant access to those who need access to your accounts. If permission is always needed to access an account, you will know exactly who is in the account. You can deny access and take action accordingly if your password has been compromised. 

Instead of just two factor authentication, multi-factor authentication offers more steps in verifying a user. This will also provide more security to the accounts that you are trying to protect. 

Privileged User Access

This type of access will make it so that not every user has equal access to all information even after they have been authenticated to log in. If a salesperson shouldn’t have access to your company’s finance documents, then they won’t be able to get access. This will make it easier for your I.T. team to know where a breach started. Your sensitive information is always at risk, so protecting it should be top priority. 

Monitoring

This should be standard, but monitor your accounts! Always check to ensure that your security measures are working and all of your team is on board for whatever plan you have. This will make it easier to point out suspicious activity and spot a potential breach of your information. 

With a zero trust security policy, your information should be locked down at all times. While verifying each and every user and limiting everyone’s access, it will be much more difficult for your information to leak. 

To find out how we can help, contact us today!