Data Breach: The Threats to Your Data
A data breach can be a devastating, sometimes unrecoverable blow to your operations and your reputation. A data breach can expose your employees’ private information to the world. Intellectual property in any electronic form should be guarded with the utmost care because if stolen can cause a business to lose its entire competitive edge. Ransomware threats, where a company’s data is stolen and held in ransom for payment, are becoming increasingly common and expensive.
Data Security – 3 Categories
We take a three-pronged approach to secure the data of an enterprise such as yours. It begins with the network in your building, then extends to the computers on your network, and ends with the people using those computers.
1. The Network in Your Building
A secure network environment will use a next-generation firewall, which continually receives updates based on the current threats. This is important because hackers are daily finding new ways to defeat old security measures. These firewalls offer intrusion protection systems (IPS) and intrusion detection systems (IDS). IPS and IDS are necessary for the confident assurance that a network has not been compromised. A quality firewall can detect incoming threats from the outside world as well as rogue activity within the network itself.
In addition to a firewall, proper network segmentation is critical to ensuring users cannot freely roam a network once they are inside of it. An IT professional can assist you in properly segmenting your network to maximize your network security.
2. The Computers on Your Network
For a computer workstation to be maximally protected, it should have a current antivirus subscription from a reputable company. Additionally, the operating systems should be routinely patched to protect against newly exposed vulnerabilities. Drive backups should also be routinely performed to ensure the data is always accessible should the computer fail or be compromised. All three of these items are critical to a secure computer workstation, and a Managed Service Provider (MSP) can automate these steps across your entire enterprise to keep your workstations protected, and take the responsibility of workstation protection away from the individual users.
3. The People Using Your Computers
As firewalls and antivirus software become more advanced, hackers are increasingly turning their attention toward the people using these systems. Multi-factor authentication, or MFA, is a critical step in hardening user logins for all companywide products. This will ensure that if a user’s login is compromised, the hacker also needs access to the user’s phone or email to complete the login. This creates an extra barrier that most often prevents the login from happening.
Phishing, or “social engineering” is a common way that hackers will attempt to get around multi-factor authentication by gaining the trust of the user through various means. We have found that through phishing prevention training, users can become aware of phishing attempts and maintain a critical mind when they receive unsolicited files or requests for information.
Where Do I Start?
A reliable Managed Service Provider can assist you with protecting the network in your building, the computers on your network, and providing proper education and training to the people using those computers. By targeting all three, an MSP can help you dramatically reduce your chances of losing your data to those with malicious intent.
Don’t have an MSP? Click below to learn about our team of IT specialists who can help you properly secure your network and your data. At Point Monitor we have been specializing in physical access control, intrusion detection, video surveillance, and fire protection for over 20 years.