How to Fortify Any Business Against Crippling Cyber Attacks

Hackers are not only an issue for celebrities with embarrassing photos they don’t want made public. Large corporations are also victims of cybersecurity breaches, and it is an ongoing problem that needs a solution. Trade secrets, internal emails, even unremarkable communications between colleagues can be accessed by criminals and become a major crisis. As recently as May 27, 2016, MySpace passwords were stolen for a price of $2,800, putting the company in a bad light and users at risk.

Cybersecurity breaches can happen at any time to any company. The Security Solutions VP of AT&T, Jason Porter, stated “In 2015, 62 percent of organizations reported having security breaches. Forty-two percent of these businesses said the negative impact on their business was significant. Yet 66 percent of organizations have no effective incident response plan.” Don’t wait until your business is targeted to resolve this problem and protect your valuable data from outside hackers.

The following are tips to help businesses avoid cyber attacks and protect their valuable data:

1. Back up your data to an external device several times a day and store it for months. Ransomware is spreading like wildfire. If infected, it will lock you out of your data, demanding money to unlock it and most likely transmitting it to other buyers in the meantime. If you have a backup, you’re in good shape to recover your information. Also, don’t use the infected machine without doing a full factory reset!
2. Make sure all of your devices are using full-disk or full-device encryption with a strong password. If you lose a laptop, phone or tablet, this will make sure that anyone who has it doesn’t get access to your accounts or other data on the device.
3. Use a strong password. Well, what is a strong password? Never reuse a password. Use a sentence you can memorize instead of a jumble of characters and numbers you’ll need to write down. Here’s an example: “TodayIsTheDayToStartSecurityIn2016!” If you’re really clever, you can come up with something with a modifier on the end that is specific to a website or app, such as: “CorrectHorseBatteryStapleAmazon.com!!”
4. Make sure you have administrative access to all online accounts and services your employees or consultants use – if they leave the company, you want to make sure they don’t abuse the service or lock you out.
5. Watch out for new credit card fraud schemes. Now that the credit card chip is here, criminals are getting craftier with internet fraud. If you are in the business of selling or buying items online, be aware of the latest internet fraud techniques: triangulation, re-shipping, phishing, etc. and how to protect yourself from falling victim to these seemingly valid transactions.