Monthly Archives: January 2022

IT planning

How to Keep Your Business Thriving in a World of Risks

Managed Security Can Protect Your Business From Cyber Attacks

In the early 2000s, Cyber Security Risks began to increase their effectiveness, but antivirus (AV) solutions kept small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) safe. With AV updates, employee training, and software patching, most SMBs were able to avoid the worst of cyber attacks — until now.

Incidents, like the Wanna Cry ransomware attack, which affected organizations across the globe, served as wake-up calls for many that cyber threats are changing, and many companies still aren’t prepared. Many SMB owners know someone who’s been forced to pay a ransom to retrieve data or even had to shut down because data and systems were too costly to restore or weren’t restored as promised. Still, others have experienced cleanup costs from other malware attacks.

Many SMB owners think they won’t be targeted due to their size or small attack surface. Yet, as the chart below shows, that simply isn’t the case. Cyber criminals increasingly target SMBs because it is much easier to circumnavigate their defenses than those of enterprise companies.

The Truth About SMB Security

You are a target: 43% of all cyber attacks targeted small to medium-sized business (SMB) operations in 2018. Shadow IT is a real problem: Your employees are likely using more cloud services than you know about, creating a blind spot for your IT team and your organization’s security.
Passwords are a weak link: Employees often reuse passwords across accounts and use easy-to-guess passwords. Human error is hard to prevent: Your employees may use public Wifi to do their work, accidentally click on phishing emails, or share sensitive data on cloud services or flash drives.
The latest threats elude AV: Weaponized documents, fileless threats, zero-day threats, and ransomware lack signature and can slip through scheduled AV scans. You may have compliance risks: If your SMB works in a heavily regulated business, you could face regulator fines in addition to cleanup costs.
Data sharing: Your partners may not have air-tight security, exposing your data to unauthorized access.

What Can you do About Cyber Security Risks?

It pays to get serious about Cyber Security. Enhancing your security posture can proactively help you harden your defenses and protect yourself from threats before they hit your company networks and disable your business, systems, and data.

When you invest in managed security, you get:

  • A comprehensive solution for all your security needs
  • Cloud-based solutions that are updated automatically with the latest threat data
  • The ability to “rollback” any systems hit with ransomware to a pre-infection state
  • Complete security coverage and simplified cost structures
  • And end to security management headaches and worries

Password Managment System

Password Management and Why It’s Important

Statistically speaking, 78% of attackers use stolen passwords to gain access to business applications. Additionally, 65% of end-users use identical passwords for multiple accounts, and 45% of cyberattacks target small businesses.

What is happening in cybersecurity?

Your passwords are the keys to your entire organization, workflow, and confidential client data.

They have to be protected.

However, 89% of employees admit to retaining access to at least one application from a former employer and 49% admit to logging into and using an account from their former employer.

When thinking about cybersecurity and how it affects your organization, there are some questions you can ask yourself:

  1. How confident are you that your employees are not using the same password for different accounts?
  2. Do you monitor who is using sensitive data and when they are using it?
  3. What is the risk for former employees retaining passwords?

Install a culture of security.

When it comes to cultivating a theme of security in your organization and prevent cyber criminal access to your network, there are some best practices you can follow:

  1. Create complex passwords: Eliminate weak passwords or password reuse.
  2. Design strong access policies: Assign role-based access and lockout former employees.
  3. Protect business applications: Adjust permissions as employees advance or leave.
  4. Anytime, anywhere access: Sync credentials across devices and platforms — on-site, mobile, and cloud.
  5. Reporting for compliance: Meet data privacy and financial regulations.
  6. Run audits and reports: Monitor and audit who is accessing sensitive data and when.

What’s wrong with “free” or consumer-grade password management tools?

With your business at stake, it’s important not to trust anything but enterprise password management with military-grade encryption. Most free and consumer-grade solutions will not guarantee the following:

  • Offer one controllable password service shared across your organization.
  • Mitigate passwords walking out the door with former employees.
  • Give you a centralized way to limit or revoke access.
  • Enable comprehensive usage tracking, auditing, and reporting.
  • Use an encrypted password zero-trust protocol for sharing passwords with us to expedite support tasks.

Wrap up

When it comes to password management, there are a lot of risks involved, especially without professional protection to back up your organization.

With a managed IT provider, you’ll have guaranteed security and feel confident that your passwords are secure and protected. Additionally, managed IT services providers will assist in managing employee system access and lockout former employees.

Lastly, with frequenting auditing and health checks, you’ll always be aware of any issues before they arise.