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Cyber Security Essentials, Are Cyber Criminals Accessing Your Network?
We are hearing more and more about the dangers of cyber criminals stealing and accessing data and holding companies and organisations to ransom to unlock their precious data. Small to medium sized businesses have fallen victim to cybercrime or might do in the future, here are few points to consider protecting your business
1 Passwords – Weak passwords are not good news and you are just begging to be violated without having strong passwords in place. You should be using at least 8 characters which should include lowercase, uppercase, symbols and at least one number, passwords should also be changed regularly as part of good housekeeping.
2 Staff Training – Staff or employees that are not trained will put any company in danger as they can be your biggest risk to any organization. It is a known fact that an employee not trained on how to spot a phishing email designed to look like legitimate correspondence from a trusted source can infect an entire network by clicking on a link. Staff training is important on how to check infected emails or online scams, without the training or knowledge, they could easily compromise your companies’ network.
3 Backup System – Are you backing up your data in multiple places, using the 3-2-1 method? In the event of a Ransomware attack, you definitely do not want to be paying a cybercriminal to hand you back your data and most times they still don’t hand it back even after you pay for it.
4 Firewalls – All firewalls are created differently but all of them do the main fundamental job and that is monitor traffic entering and leaving your network. Regular maintenance of your firewall should be part of your IT strategy and planning
5 Maintenance and Service - Doing regular updates and patching, Managed IT services from your MSP Managed Service Providers will be able to do this in the background automatically. It is vital that you patch and update your system frequently.
6 Downloading files – this again falls under staff training again, cyber criminals will con staff in downloading malicious software which can be embedded in legitimate looking apps or files or programs
7 Doppelganger - Cybercriminals will also impersonate somebody else within your organization or even pretending to be you and persuade other staff to execute instructions, for example pay a supplier or transfer funds.
If you have any security concerns or need any help, please contact Control I.T Solutions - 01738 310271
