Data is more of a commodity than it has ever been, and more often than not, companies spend a considerable sum on data security. Unfortunately, even the most well-defended organizations still have trouble keeping data safe. 2018 saw 446.5 million records exposed due to data breaches, even though the overall number of breaches dropped by 23 percent to 1,244 total. We’ll discuss some of the most notable breaches that have happened over the first four months of 2019.
Social media plays an increasing role in both the professional and personal sides of our lives. Unfortunately, this means that we all experience an increase in exposure to the many scam attempts that will appear on our screens. Like any kind of scam, the best defense against those that appear on social media is good, old-fashioned awareness and vigilance.
For the modern business a lot of time is spent focusing on network security. The theory behind this action is that there are all types of threats that could be trying to get into your computer network. At a college, you’d expect that, since so much sensitive data, including personal, medical, and financial information--as well as intellectual property--is stored on college computers/servers, that the diligence of IT administrators would be even more conspicuous.
With Microsoft betting on Windows 10 to be their #1 OS for the foreseeable future, it is important for them to be able to sufficiently protect their users from the growing threats looking to make life difficult for businesses from all over the world. Today, we will take a look at Windows 10 Enterprise Security, and how it works to protect businesses from harm.
Messaging applications are critical to the success of the modern business, but it’s important that they don’t compromise security in the pursuit of convenience. There is a specific set of criteria involved with ensuring that your chosen messaging applications are secure.
2018 has been the year of the hack. The problem, so was 2017, 2016, and so on… Marriott International has announced that they have had what could be the second largest data leak in history. They are saying that they are responsible for a data breach that leaked some 500 million records over a five-year span.
Data security isn’t the easiest thing in the world to plan for, especially if your organization doesn’t have any dedicated security professionals on-hand. While protecting your data with traditional methods, like passwords, firewalls, and antivirus, is important, what measures are you taking to make sure a thief or hacker isn’t just walking into your office and making off with your technology?
When asked how one can prevent threats from attacking a business’ infrastructure, one of the first answers that we’d give is to ensure that all patches have been applied. Doing so will help to stop an attack from infecting your systems, if a patch has been successfully developed. Unfortunately, the recent spread of the BCMUPnP_Hunter botnet is evidence that not enough people are appropriately patching their systems.
When you think about your data security, what kind of solutions pop into mind? If you’re like many, you probably start thinking about passwords, firewalls, and antivirus, right? While these are all good things to have, you also have to consider the possibility that someone could break into your office and bypass all of these defenses, simply by picking up your server and walking out.
An email’s important, that much is clear fact - but you need to stay safe from an email attack.
If you use a computer today, there’s a fair chance that you have a Google account. The practicality that if offers with its comprehensive service offerings simply can’t be ignored. However, it is also important that a user’s, whether they utilize it for business or personal use, security isn’t ignored either.
Mobile devices - like smartphones, tablets, and the like - are expected to be used by 2.87 billion people by 2020. That’s a lot of devices, with a good portion of them contributing to business operations. Unfortunately, that’s also a lot of potential security issues if the right preparations aren’t taken in advance.
When all is said and done, your business’ success relies in no small part on how secure you keep it, and in order to be secure, you need to know what threats are apt to target your business. Below are four of the biggest concerns that you need to be sure that your security implementations address.
It is no secret that kids these days have more access to technology than any generation before them. While this access can truly help to enrich their lives if leveraged properly, it can also have serious ramifications if it isn’t checked.
With all the stories in the news about data breach after data breach, it’s easy to get the idea that the only threats to your organization are those that are trying to break in. This can be a dangerous oversight--one that could cost your business’ future. If you ignore the possibilities, you could very well be putting your organization in jeopardy. We’ll discuss some of the major internal dangers that your business could face.
By now everyone knows about ransomware, the dastardly strand of malware that encrypts data (or the drives it’s stored on) and sends the user a message demanding payment in a certain amount of time before the data is deleted forever. To add a little more menace to an already stressful situation, the message includes a countdown clock. If it sounds like a bad situation, rest assured it is. How could it get worse you ask? Simple, make it more difficult to stop.
Zero-day threats are some of the most dangerous ones out there. What we mean by “zero day” threats are those that have been discovered by hackers before an official patch has been released by the developers, giving them exactly zero days before they are actively exploited in the wild. One of the more dangerous zero-day threats out there at the moment is one that takes advantage of Internet Explorer.
Email is a modern classic as far as business solutions are concerned, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an office that didn’t use it in some capacity or another. However, because email is so popular, it has become a favorite attack vector of malicious users. Fortunately, there are some basic practices that will help keep your email account secure and your communications private.
Ransomware doesn’t discriminate with its targets, as the city of Atlanta, Georgia now knows so painfully well. The city became the target of a ransomware attack that crippled many of its critical system workflows. The municipal government suffered from one of the most advanced and sustained attacks in recent memory.
This guide was created so that business owners, office managers, and IT departments can provide it as an educational resource to showcase some of the most basic IT security practices that can be implemented in your workplace. We recommend printing this out and handing it out to your staff for maximum results.
