60 Million Malware programs are written every single year by cyber criminals.\u00a0 All it takes is one of these programs to steal personal information like bank account numbers, passwords, usernames, corporate data, and social security numbers.\u00a0 They can quickly spread throughout an entire network and are excellent at staying undetected and lying in wait for their prey.\u00a0 Then they strike, holding a network or computers hostage and rendering them useless.\u00a0 A security breach does more harm than just your computers, it hurts your company\u2019s image and reputation, make customers lose faith in your ability to keep their information safe, and can leave you open to legal troubles and more.<\/p>\n
So is it worth the high price of protection?\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 Sure, you may not be a target of attacks for several years, but the one time you are is all it takes.\u00a0 Operational losses to locate and rectify the problem can be outstanding on their own, but rehabilitating the image of the company is another issue altogether.\u00a0 The loss of sales from those who no longer trust your ability to keep their information safe is damaging, and nothing is more harmful than word of mouth.\u00a0 Customers saying \u201cOh don\u2019t buy from them, I heard a bunch of hackers got into their computers and took all the credit card numbers of customers\u201d could become a huge obstacle for your marketing team.\u00a0 The truth may be that malware breached the system, and only had brief access to a server that had encrypted password files that was shut down immediately, but that\u2019s not what will be said in the media or what will be passed around.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t protect your network, you are asking for media backlash and even fines.\u00a0\u00a0 Just look at what the public reaction was to Sony being hacked back in 2011.\u00a0 They lost 77 million usernames and passwords to hackers; passwords that they had just sitting on a server in an unencrypted text file.\u00a0 The hack caused them to take their service down for almost a month.\u00a0 If that wasn\u2019t enough damage, they were fined approximately $400,000 by the Information Commissioners Office, a U.K. based watchdog group.\u00a0 A spokesman for the ICO said (regarding Sony):<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no disguising that this is a business that should have known better. It is a company that trades on its technical expertise, and there\u2019s no doubt in my mind that they had access to both the technical knowledge and the resources to keep this information safe.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
No one will ever say managing your security is easy.\u00a0 Humans move 667 Exabytes (that\u2019s 667 MILLION Terabytes) of data over the internet per year.\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot of data to protect, but the worst thing you can do is wait till you get hit to react.\u00a0 It\u2019s too late at that point.\u00a0 In 2011 alone, 30.4 million sensitive records were breached.\u00a0 Improving your cyber security means putting policies, procedures, and technical mechanisms in place to protect, detect, and fix problems before they are problems.\u00a0 This includes training staff to notice and report possible intrusions.\u00a0 On average it takes 20 hours for a breach to be reported, and another 9 hours for it to be confirmed.\u00a0 A lot of damage can be done in that amount of time.\u00a0 Your greatest threat isn\u2019t the hackers, malware, or rival companies though, it\u2019s you.\u00a0 If you leave the gates undefended, you are asking for them to storm the castle.<\/p>\n
If you are worried about your network security, ask yourself these questions:<\/p>\n
Who Should Have Access to the Network (and what parts)?<\/p>\n
What Process of User Authentication do we use?\u00a0 Do we need stricter Authentication?<\/p>\n
What Hardware or Software can be installed to help defend our Network?<\/p>\n
What\u2019s our plan if we were to detect a security breach?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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