Ransomware is a serious issue for businesses. How serious?
Think “$265 billion in costs by 2031” serious. In light of this, every organization needs to do everything possible to avoid falling victim to ransomware. Let’s touch on a few practices that will help.
Passwords, as annoying as they are sometimes, are the front line of defense to almost every account and profile your business depends on. That doesn’t stop security professionals from trying to develop better strategies to secure digital systems. Some of the biggest names in tech are searching for ways to forge ahead passwordless. Let’s take a look at one example that has drawn the attention of the tech community.
For quite a while it took an actual disaster to encourage business leaders to allocate any time and money to put towards cybersecurity. Many businesses still don’t, in fact. Those that have, while absolutely prudent in their use of resources to help ward off security problems, may forget that there are still things that need to be done aside from employee training to keep their security up. Let’s go through a few things that every organization should be doing to maintain the security of their information systems.
When it comes to your network and its security, you cannot give all of your users access to all of your assets. It’s just not a good practice, and doing so can potentially put your resources at risk. Let’s discuss how network segmentation can make a world of difference for the integrity of your network and the data found on it.
If Edgar Allan Poe worked in an office, here’s what one of his works would sound like:
True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I have been and am, but why will you say that I am mad? The office had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was my sense of hearing. I heard all things in heaven and on earth and many things in…the other place. So, how then am I mad, especially when I can so healthily and calmly tell you this story?
While we strongly recommend that you put the security safeguard known as multi-factor authentication in place wherever it is available, it is important that we acknowledge that cybercriminals are frustratingly inventive. So much so, in fact, that a new form of attack has been developed to take advantage of MFA, referred to as MFA fatigue.
Social engineering is a dangerous threat that could derail even the most prepared business. Even if you implement the best security solutions on the market, they mean nothing if a cybercriminal tricks you into acting impulsively. Let’s go over specific methods of social engineering that hackers might use to trick you.
Sometimes it can be easy to take cybersecurity for granted, especially when you consider that built-in security features are more powerful than they have ever been. Unfortunately, if you think that cybersecurity is something that ends with the built-in security of your desktops and laptops, then you’re in for a rude awakening.
Hacking attacks can be stressful to manage, but when you add in that they can strike when you least expect them to, it gets a lot worse. You’ll never know how you respond to such an event unless you simulate it and replicate it somehow. This is what the penetration test is used for; it provides your business with a way to prepare for cyberattacks.
How many devices or points of access do you have for your business’ data infrastructure? Chances are it’s more than you think, at least at first glance. If you count up all the mobile devices, server units, workstations, laptops, and so on that have access to your network, you might suddenly realize how important it is to secure all of these endpoints, as any unsecured device could be a path forward for hackers.
If you aren’t making cybersecurity a priority for your business, then we urge you to review the following statistics to ensure that you understand the gravity of the consequences. Let’s take a look at some of the ways scammers and hackers are making their way around the carefully-laid defenses placed by businesses and how you can protect your own organization.
How often do you check social media only to find your news feed clogged with your friends and family sharing the results of quizzes like, “Which Star Wars character are you,” or “What’s your superhero name based on your birthday.” While these quizzes might seem harmless on the surface, they often hide a far more sinister agenda, one which uses the personally identifiable information provided to them for nefarious purposes.
During the first half of the Super Bowl last month, cryptocurrency exchange company Coinbase bought a minute of ad space to broadcast an ad that was just a QR code on the screen, meandering diagonally around the screen like the famous Windows screensaver. Millions of people took out their smartphones and scanned the code and now cybersecurity professionals are publicly decrying the tactic.
You see the headlines every single day while browsing the Internet: “So-and-So Suffers Massive Data Breach” or “Huge Data Breach Leaves Thousands of Credentials Exposed to Hackers.” Maybe you don’t see these specific headlines, but you get the idea; cybersecurity is a big deal these days, and you need to take it seriously before your business encounters problems that it cannot recover from.
Today’s cybersecurity landscape is dangerous, to say the least, prompting many organizations to adopt what is called a zero-trust policy for their security standards. Is a zero-trust policy the best solution for your company’s cybersecurity woes, and how effective is it toward preventing security issues? Let’s take a look.
Ransomware is bad stuff, and it’s only gotten worse with its recent resurgence that aligned with the COVID-19 pandemic. Phishing attacks and other means by which ransomware is commonly spread have used the current atmosphere as a springboard. This makes it even more critical that these kinds of behaviors and attempts can be spotted and stopped.
Imagine going to log into one of your devices only to find that it has been completely wiped of any files located on it. Furthermore, imagine trying to log into your online account to manage the settings of said device, only to find that the password you know is correct is being identified as incorrect. This is the experience that many users of Western Digital’s My Book NAS device are currently going through, and it’s suspected that it is all because of an unpatched vulnerability.
Cybersecurity is one aspect of running a business that absolutely cannot be underestimated in its importance. It doesn't matter if you’re a huge enterprise or a small business; if you don’t take cybersecurity seriously, there is a very real possibility that your organization could be threatened in the near future. The easiest way to ensure your business’ continuity is to develop an internal culture of cybersecurity, and it starts from the top-down with you, the boss.
We’re all familiar with the idea that pop culture has cultivated in our minds about computer hackers, but as it happens, this impression is just one of the many shapes that the modern hacker can take. This kind of closed-off view is dangerously shortsighted, so let’s take a few moments to dig into the kinds of hackers there are, in ascending order of the threat they pose to your business.
Ransomware is no laughing matter, especially in terms of the costs it can impose on its victims—this is, after all, what ransomware is famous for. However, some of these costs can be derived from unexpected expenses and exacerbate the already significant issues that ransomware poses. Let’s go over some of the costs that you should anticipate, should you be targeted by a successful ransomware attempt.