A recent statistic (*Chub) showed cyber-attacks increased over 35% during the holiday season last year. What gives? Let’s face it, we tend to drop our guard a bit during this season. So many distractions, events, and shiny objects encourage us to drop our focus. But when you consider that a full 60% of businesses that lose network functionality for more than 2 days, typically go out of business, it matters. Last year, we noticed a considerable amount of attacks disguised as tax-related alerts to trick people into giving up their passwords. One compromised account can seriously affect an entire company. Now that an estimated 88% of all business customers have migrated to Office365, it is critically important to “keep the fox out of the hen house!” What can we do? Read More link…
First, we must educate employees to the dangers lurking near. Be vigilant on which emails you open. If there is any doubt, pick up a phone to verify. It’s a great idea to establish some checks and balances. For example, during the tax season, does your CPA change something in your bank account without first calling to double-check? Did you realize you can restrict people from logging in from unsafe locations? Also, be aware that you can back up your Office365 SharePoint and OneDrive Data.
Business owners and risk managers should have a cyber-incident response plan in place for their business. A 3rd party can do a risk assessment periodically to further protect you from potential liabilities. Turning on multi-factor authentication (MFA) can have a huge impact on security. Does your company use some type of “content filtering?” Preventing some malware from ever being seen is a good first step. You don’t want to be the next company making the news for the wrong reasons. Vertisys can help you navigate the complexity of securing your digital assets. If you would like to get future articles and helpful hints for your members, please click here. Information courtesy of Vertisys, which provided a Tech Showcase speaker for us last week.