Cybersecurity is a hot topic and at Unified Technology we are continually looking for the latest information regarding the prevention of cyber threats. What was once thought of as a big company/governmental issue is trickling down to end users, both in business and personal use. It’s just too easy for someone to send a phishing email with a virus embedded or attached and there is almost always someone within the company who isn’t paying attention. Once these emails are open and the software gets on your server, you are in trouble.
Not willing to take our word for it. Read this excerpt from Business News Daily about a course being offered to teach people about these threats:
“Before you can begin to protect yourself, it’s important to understand the threats that exist. Barker created his training course to do exactly that. Breaking down the basics of the most common techniques employed by hackers, the course is designed to help IT professionals anticipate and evade such attacks. By teaching about these threats from the ground up, Barker hopes to demonstrate to IT pros and entrepreneurs the nature of the myriad attacks that could be used against their systems.
“There are a lot of scary things in this course,” Barker told Business News Daily. “The objective is shock, to wake people up to the kinds of things that are out there.”
Two of the largest threats facing businesses, he said, are people being tricked into unwittingly opening the door for a malicious attack, and malware, which is any form of hostile or intrusive software that seeks to leverage your system for a nefarious purpose. In addition to those common attacks, Barker included distributed denial of service attacks, which flood a server with requests to overload it and temporarily shut down the system, and hijacking, or redirecting traffic by altering a system’s DNS servers.
Still, that hardly scratches the surface of what’s out there, and for a small IT team with a heavy workload, some of these threats can be easily overlooked, he said.
“Especially for a small business that doesn’t have a huge IT staff or any specialists, one- or two-people teams are perhaps so busy they might not have time to step back and say, ‘Okay, what are we forgetting here?'” Barker said.
Mitigating the risk of a cyberattack
Once you’ve identified some of the most likely threats, you can mitigate the risks to your systems. Large companies heavily divert resources to this kind of protection and risk analysis, but small businesses are often unable to do so, Barker said.
“Huge companies spend millions and millions of dollars on [cybersecurity],” he said. “Small companies might just spend the money [necessary] to keep their systems functional.”
But by identifying the biggest risks to your business and insulating them as much as possible, he said, you can help reduce the likelihood of an attack causing immense damage to your assets and reputation.
“If one server means a lot for revenue or the company, for example, that’s a great server to help protect,” Barker said. “You might move it to the cloud and use cloud security, which really just means someone else is doing it for you. That’s why so many small companies are using cloud services, because they can be compliant with all these check boxes they need without internal staff.”
Cyber threats are real, but we can help you to lower your risk significantly with a proper Cyber Security Plan. Perhaps by moving your data to a cloud server, or through the installation of a very robust security anti-virus software program. No matter what, it’s a good idea to make an appointment for us to come in, review your operation, and make suggestions to keep your data safe.
Your Tech Guys