Huge Business Losses Due to cybercriminal efforts, hundreds of millions of dollars that should be available to businesses are not. Over the past year alone, almost two billion dollars have been stolen from businesses, as compared to $600 million in 2019? and that isn?t even taking the $380 million that firms have paid in response to ransomware attacks into consideration. Hackers will commonly direct their attacks toward larger companies, often those in the financial services, energy, and manufacturing industry sectors. Why? Simple: these companies are often vulnerable, with larger losses from their downtime events. Attacks Are Up This year has been largely unprecedented, with huge numbers of people working from home. Unfortunately, many of these people are doing so without the requisite cybersecurity protections in place. As a result, cyberattacks are happening at a rate of approximately 4,000 each day? an increase of about 400 percent during the past year alone. Attack Vectors Adding to the cybercriminal?s list of attacks, the COVID-19 pandemic has given hackers increased opportunities to shape their attacks. Cybersecurity professionals are seeing a lot of attacks utilizing the current crisis to manipulate their targets, as well as focusing on the organizations dedicated to researching a COVID-19 vaccine. In addition to the critical data these organizations hold, there is a lot of pressure to overwhelm these firms? which potentially leaves them more vulnerable to attack. Many cybercriminals have jumped on this opportunity, including one group known as APT29. APT29 has been identified by both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Interpol as a particular threat, targeting research being conducted in the US, UK, and Canada. Ransomware has also been on the rise as remote work has been more commonly implemented, as remote workers tend to be more vulnerable to these attacks. This, paired with the continued interest in recent coronavirus developments, have led to many successful strategies being deployed by cybercriminals. These strategies have included: Emails that claim to have information about COVID-19 vaccines and shortages of PPE. Messages claiming to be from the government about stimulus payments. Free downloads for video and audio conferencing solutions, a major communications strategy during the pandemic. Hackers have also become cleverer in what their ransomware attacks do, with some directing the data to the hacker after a payment is made to decrypt it so that the owner must pay up twice. How to Respond For your business to survive this pandemic, you first need to be aware of how the situation has impacted the cybersecurity space and complicated matters. Three of the biggest challenges are as follows: Many businesses were not prepared to properly implement remote work before it was required for their business to function. This only increased the difficulties that these businesses faced. Due to this, many of the preventative measures and security monitors were traded off in favor of more efficient remote capabilities. Moreover, attackers are still using COVID-19 as bait to lure their targets into their schemes. To counteract these issues, you need to take a holistic and inclusive approach to cybersecurity preparedness. Here are some elements you need to strongly consider: Training ? Your team can either be your weakest point or your strongest asset, in terms of your security. Make sure they are educated about the different ways a cybercriminal can try to manipulate […]
The password isn’t nearly as secure as it used to be. Hackers have begun to take advantage of extremely powerful solutions designed to brute force their way into accounts by using software to rapidly guessing thousands of passwords per second, making it extraordinarily difficult to prepare yourself for them. What’s the best way to guarantee that passwords aren’t going to be the downfall of your company? A great start is by taking a close look at password best practices and two-factor authentication.
The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.
With a BDR, you get the convenience of having a network attached copy of your data coupled with the redundancy you need to ensure that your data is protected. Best yet, the BDR can run automatically at preset intervals so that your company doesn?t risk losing more than 15 minutes? worth of data. Furthermore, BDR uses the cloud to perform data backups, which provides a significantly better system for getting back in the game following a critical loss incident. The cloud allows for faster restoration times, less downtime, and more complete data backups. The cloud utilizes snapshot-based data backup, which only updates the current backup if the files have been changed, making it truly the best way to go about protecting your organization from unforeseen threats. For those businesses that currently operate without a data backup and recovery strategy–especially if you?ve been in business for some time–you may think that it?s just another cost that you are taking on that will hurt your business? ability to turn a profit. You may not think you have enough data that you think is important enough to warrant additional investment in protecting it. You are probably mistaken, however. You have important data, and if you lose it, you stand to lose your business. In fact, 94 percent of businesses that fall victim to a major data loss incident fail within two years of the incident. If you consider six percent of all computers will fail in any given year, it stands to reason that it?s only a matter of time before you are dealing with a data loss catastrophe. Keep your business out of harm?s way with a backup and disaster recovery strategy. Call White Mountain IT Services today at (603) 889-0800 to learn more.
The cloud has proven to be an extremely useful tool for the modern business. Not only does it provide anywhere-anytime access to applications, processing, storage, et al; it also delivers those products as a service, allowing you to budget for recurring costs rather than major upfront ones. This provides your organization with functional, supported, and secure computing environments that eliminate a lot of the support costs that traditional computing environments require. It sounds like a perfect scenario for small and large businesses alike, but things aren’t always what they seem, as a lot of cloud users have found that they have incurred several hidden costs by using cloud platforms. Today, we take a look at these hidden costs.
