In the past couple of years, the importance of cybersecurity has been emphasized. In the age where more people are completing transactions, making big purchases, and doing research online, consumers are relying on corporations to safeguard their personal data. Here is how companies like Florida Nerds have helped galvanize security measures.
Be Cognizant of Your Posting Activity
What you say about others online does not exist in a vacuum – there are real-life repercussions to dubious claims made online. You can be sued or face other legal troubles for incredulous claims. You may also open yourself to retaliatory attacks in the form of data theft or hacking. What you post online affects businesses and people alike; for example, if you post that you’re going on vacation for a week, people with bad intentions will be aware that you’ll be away from your home for an extended period. This opens your home or business to theft and burglaries. You should also be careful of breaking NDA’s and other employment contracts that you have signed. Stay away from posting and exposing personal information about others or defaming individuals publicly with no concrete proof.
Understanding What Sort of Data Your Business Is Collecting
To keep your corporation safe online, you should conduct an audit of collected data and identify which pieces of information is public. This sort of grading of information will allow you to enact the appropriate security standards to safeguard it from peering eyes. A corporation that is self-aware of highly sensitive information should adopt the appropriate firewalls to protect it. Remember that a corporation’s reputation is its lifeline – even one instance of an information leak can be devastating and can affect your bottom line. Personal information should be encrypted appropriately and should be guarded safely with the highest form of cybersecurity. This can be enacted by allowing only a select few the rights to access member information.
Utilize Multiple Forms of Authentication
Authentication confirms an identity, whether this is a device or a human being trying to access sensitive information. The identity is then compared to provided credentials against a guarded database for proper identification. Incredulous characters who are trying to gain access to confidential information are then blocked, with the actions being recorded and reported. Corporations can also utilize digital certificates to identify login attempts. If appropriate, fingerprints and facial recognition software can also augment cybersecurity.
Keep in mind that key loggers will continuously try to crack login information and codes. You can throw off their attempts by changing login information on a regular basis. If you’re using the same password and login information for every account, then it is not difficult for a hacker to gain access to all of your corporate systems. Complicated passwords that include characters, letters, and symbols can also protect from brute force attempts to find your passwords. Thankfully there are applications and software that allow you to streamline the process of safeguarding complicated login info. Password managers act as a central hub, protecting your login information. All of these applications also have distinct security measures, like preventing devices from taking a screenshot. These peripheral security measures offer an additional layer of security.
Benefits of Employing a Hacker
It may be a bit counter-intuitive, but some white hat hackers aren’t interested in gaining access to sensitive information. Instead of provoking, some hackers want to protect. These are ethical hackers that will continuously try to hack you, your infrastructure, your servers, workstations, databases, telephone system, your employees and inform you if they are successful. This is a proactive way of protecting data. A white hat hacker will be doing the hacking before someone with incredulous motives does so.
Be Aware of the Latest Regulations in Your Industry Niche
Most industries will have to follow a set of standards and best practices that they will need to comply to ensure data protection. However, many of these safety implications tend to be very minimal. You can help bolster cybersecurity by closely following organizations that follow the latest regulations. For example, those who work in the energy sector can follow NIST Cybersecurity Framework for the latest news, with automobile corporations and official blogs following Framework for Automotive Cybersecurity.
The Role of Cyber Insurance
Typically, insurance policies do not cover data loss. However, cyber insurance has cropped up as the importance of data protection has been spotlighted. This type of insurance will cover your bases during business downtime due to potential data theft.
Ensure All Systems Are Only Accessible through Strenuous Authentication
Similar to how you ensure that your most essential data is only accessible via certification, you also need to ensure that all of your business infrastructures are only accessible through strenuous authentication measures. There should only be a select few who can access personal information. The employment of intranets, for example, can help bolster cybersecurity since the network is continuously being monitored.
Always Make Sure That Your Software Is Continuously Updated
Software updates are released with the latest forms of preventative measures to protect information. Since hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities, keeping your software updated is one of the best ways to protect data. Software companies work hard to create patches to fix these vulnerabilities.
Backup Data Regularly
Data backups is a proactive way of safeguarding data from loss or theft. In the damning case that information is compromised, we can erase it and restore a clean slate of it with a proper restore. You should always backup your data in different locations and using different methods so hackers cannot gain access to it.
Take Advantage of Firewall Security
Firewalls keep a tally of inbound and outbound traffic streams, monitoring it for any incredulous login attempts, viruses, and spyware. You can create a set of rules on your firewall so that it knows what sort of information or login attempts it should allow.
Email Security
Email continues to be one of their weak points when it comes to cybersecurity. Too many people use personal information as part of the login passwords. These passwords are easily cracked, allowing hackers to gain access to private data. You should seek an email security solution that can encrypt messages both ways – incoming and outgoing. Many emails suites verify messages and origins to ensure that they are coming from the proper coworker or family member. This helps to prevent spoofed emails and thwart phishing attempts.
Assume That There Is a Vulnerability in Your System
No matter your attempts, you aren’t always 100% safe from a cyber-attack. There’s always a new vulnerability popping up. By assuming that there is a constant threat, you’ll be one step ahead of potential hackers.
Audit Your Infrastructure
It’s helpful to employ internal resources as well as external resources to analyze your network regularly for vulnerabilities. Exploits, malware, viruses, and the like are released every day. It’s important to spend the time necessary analyzing your infrastructure. Your company’s data and customer’s data may be exposed. Frequent audits ensure that your protected and so is your precious data.
Conclusion:
These are just a small sampling of the ways you can begin to secure your network. Your network and infrastructure security professional(s)in New York or in Florida can give you more insight as to options available that would best suit your needs.
