Ransomware: How It Takes Your Organization Hostage and What You Can Do About It
Ransomware is a major threat to every Calgary organization and knowing how you can combat it can help prevent and thwart attacks.
Ransomware is a major threat to every Calgary organization and knowing how you can combat it can help prevent and thwart attacks.
These cybersecurity trends should be driving your strategy for 2022 and beyond. The ITeam is here to help.
Multifactor authentication is an essential element in information security, preventing unauthorized logins to your network.
Email is the gateway used by most hackers to launch their nefarious schemes. Today’s hackers are far more sophisticated than before, and they’re willing to take their time to gather the information they need to successfully hack into your organization. Your best phish defense – besides layers of security and a great MSP partner – is employee education. Training your staff on what to look for in a phishing email and to be cautious with every email – even those that look like they come from your CEO – could potentially save your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Be honest: If you were busy and you received an email from john@qutterinstallers.com, would you really notice that the email address was off by one letter? Now go back and look at the email address. You probably thought it read ‘john at Gutterinstallers.com,’ right? But in reality, it read ‘john at Qutterinstallers.com.’ Yes, hackers are that subtle. Because not only can they make emails look like they have been sent from an internal address, but they can also insert themselves mid-conversation into an email thread so that you really do think you’re talking to the right person. This is why every email requires the same vigilance – even if you think it’s from your boss or best client.
Hackers can also make it look as if an email was sent from john@Gutterinstallers.com, but when you hover over the email link (try it here), you’ll see that, in fact, it was sent from hacked@hackerswin.com.
It should be the policy of every company not to pay invoices, click links, open attachments, or take other actions without at least asking if it’s possible that the email could be fake. Look for these telltale clues and red flags in an email header:
When you’re always on high alert about the potential risks of email, you’ll start noticing when something seems off. Watch for these clues:
If there is a link in an email, you should be on high alert. You can often tell when it’s a phishing email. Try these steps: When you hover over (but don’t click) on the link, does it go to a different website than what it says in the text? Does the hyperlink look similar to a legitimate website but differ, if only slightly?
Does the email contain an attachment? Is the attachment a file of any type other than a text file (.txt)? Were you expecting the attachment because of a previous conversation or is it out of the blue? Does the message seem to pressure you into taking action of some kind?
Strong spam filtering can stop most phishing emails, but some will still make it through. At this point, your employees are your final line of defence against an attack. Yes, your firewall and threat management software should protect you, but without extensive training and awareness, a plan of action to protect your data, and non-stop vigilance, email may be what brings your organization down.
Download The ITeam’s Email Security Guide
Your greatest weakness can also be your greatest strength if you invest the necessary time and resources in educating your employees. When education is provided, employees become a partner in your overall cybersecurity efforts. The ITeam understands the email security issues facing Canada businesses. We are committed to helping Calgary- and Alberta-based businesses develop proactive, cost-effective IT strategies that minimize risk and maximize efficiency. Contact us to learn more.
More than 6 million Canadians were impacted by the Capital One data breach that happened this year – and that was not even the biggest breach by any stretch. The biggest data breach is still Yahoo, whose breach impacted more than 3 billion people. Big or small, however, each data breach is costly and damaging – to consumers, to businesses, and to the economy. We can – and should – learn everything we can from these incidents to avoid repeating them. In analyzing security breaches that have occurred over the last 10 years, experts found that the main reasons data breaches occur are:
Too often, a breach occurs because an organization has delayed patching, leaving them vulnerable to hackers. This often happens because the organization does not have a dedicated IT staff, leaving one or more employees responsible for IT on top of their other duties. Those other duties – their “real” jobs – take priority and patching jobs get postponed.
Partnering with a managed services provider (MSP) can help solve this problem and extend the strength of your IT team, whether your team is a whole department, or one person assigned with additional responsibilities. An MSP ensures patches are installed in a timely manner, but they’re also there to monitor your network 24/7.
Clicking links and opening attachments in emails that appear to come from within your organization or from a trusted vendor cause more data breaches than we can measure. It’s possible your organization has malware sitting on your network right now that has been introduced by an errant employee and has yet to have been detected.
While we can never completely remove human error from the equation, we can drastically reduce the number of email-related data breaches by:
Download The ITeam Email Security Guide; then discover how you can transform your employees from your weakest link to your first line of defense through security training.
Insider attacks don’t account for many data breaches, but they can be the most devastating simply because of the betrayal involved. According to the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, insider threats are on the rise, accounting for 34% of data breaches. In one case highlighted in the DBIR, a hacker admitted that when all other efforts failed, he bribed an employee to get him inside the network.
Preventing insider attacks can be difficult; they are often only discovered after the fact during forensic analysis– and often after the employee is long gone. But you can minimize the risk of insider threats by having multiple layers of security, strictly limiting employee and third-party access to data, and by conducting regular audits. Often, insider attacks come from former employees whose access to the network was not terminated; make it protocol to immediately revoke all access to employees who leave – whether they leave on good terms or not.
Mobile phones are being used to conduct business whether you authorize it or not, so your best bet for protecting your organization is to have a highly sophisticated MDM security plan in place that includes the following:
Data breaches are not going away, but you can minimize the risk to your organization with strong IT security and a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. You can’t just address one of these issues; you must have a comprehensive, proactive data security program that addresses all of these risks and more.
The ITeam understands the IT security issues facing businesses in Canada. We are committed to helping Calgary- and Alberta-based businesses develop proactive, cost-effective IT strategies that minimize risk and maximize efficiency. Contact us to learn more.
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