Cyber Security and Its Importance: How to Protect Your Business from Hackers

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Cybercrime is increasing and developing quickly along with ubiquitous worldwide digitalization. Rapid technology development is prompting cyber security experts to work more and more to counter hackers. To some extent, they can even call their competition an ‘arms race’. Threats really become more tangible. In 2018, global losses from hacker activity amounted approximately $3 trillion, and this year the quantity of leak damage is anticipated to be around 3.5 trillion. Cyber security ventures predicted last year that by 2021, cybercrime would cost the world $6 trillion per annum.

Threats are not always external, Sydney IT contractor Stephen Grant was arrested after high-profile cyberattacks involving 170,000 data records targeting Landmark White, a property firm with which he had been working for 12 years the cost Landmark White is at least $8 million. To avoid these sad statistics, staff need to be taught how to use and interact with data. Let’s talk about why cyber security is crucial for your company today, why you need it, what are some types of frequent attacks and how you can be secure from these assaults.

Cyber Security and Its Importance

Every year, the Internet becomes more of a ‘wild wild west’ (www) and continues to be commercialized, contributing to the fact that the motives of the bad hackers also referred to as ‘black hats’ are becoming increasingly greedy and being driven by organized crime syndicates, so businesses need to be prepared for such potential attacks. Improve the IT security system of your business so that sensitive data does not leak. Think about your company’s security in advance, involving and training staff.

You need to be constantly thinking about the risks and speak to your staff about the risks in order to develop effective risk culture and processes at your company. As the managing director, CEO, GM or senior management you must act consistently, and thoughtfully, if you don’t pay attention to the risks, at some stage, you will see data leakage if it has not occurred already. Be watchful, invest in your security, and shape a culture in your business in which cyber security is a valued.

Popular Types of Cyber Attacks

Phishing

Phishing is sending false electronic mail that looks like a credible source email. The objective is to steal private information such as credit card numbers and account information. This will also include sending invoices that look legitimate with the EFT detail has changed slightly, usually urgent payment required. Once you transfer that money you will have no change to get it back. Recently a client of mine lost several thousand dollars to this method. This is the cyber attack’s most prevalent form. By examining the data needed, installing technological alternatives or strict process around money transfers this can filter out malicious messages, and stop further loss.

MITM Attack

A man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) is an attack where the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communications between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other. One example of a MITM attack is active eavesdropping, in which the attacker makes independent connections with the victims and relays messages between them to make them believe they are talking directly to each other over a private connection, when in fact the entire conversation is controlled by the attacker. The attacker must be able to intercept all relevant messages passing between the two victims and inject new ones. This is straightforward in many circumstances; for example, an attacker within reception range of an unencrypted wireless access point could insert themselves as a man-in-the-middle. This sort of attack is most commonly used to steal financial information.

Attack on Mobile Devices

Like previous attacks Man-in-the-Mobile (MitMo) variants target Windows users on the Internet and use a web injection in the desktop browser to lure them into installing a fake security application on their phones. The fraudsters claim this application is required by the bank as a new layer of protection and that 15 million bank customers around the world are already using it. The victims are asked to choose the device’s operating system from the following list: iOS (iPhone), BlackBerry, Android (Samsung, HTC, etc.), Symbian (Nokia) and other.

In most attacks, if the victim is using an operating system other than Android, the malware informs the user that no further action is required. For Android users, however, the desktop component of the MitMo attack requests victims’ phone numbers and notifies them that a link for downloading the security application has been sent via SMS to their mobile device. Users are directed to install the fake application from this link and enter the activation code provided by the malware. Certain attacks also request that BlackBerry users download the application, but it does not actually install on those devices.

Once installed, the mobile malware captures all SMS traffic, including transaction authorization codes sent by the bank to the victim, and forwards them to the fraudsters. This enables the criminals to initiate fraudulent transfers and capture the security codes needed to bypass the SMS-based out-of-band authorization systems used by many European banks.

Malware/Virus

Malware is any software intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server, client, or computer network. A virus is in reality a malicious code that is attached to other files and genuine programs. Programs officially supplied by companies can be considered malware if they secretly act against the interests of the computer user. For example, at one point Sony music CDs silently installed a rootkit on purchasers’ computers running Microsoft Windows with the intention of preventing illicit copying; but which also reported on users’ listening habits, and unintentionally created extra security vulnerabilities.

Trojan

The Trojan is a malicious program that performs special operations, disguising itself as legitimate software. In other words, this malicious code cannot be found by an ordinary user, since it looks like a regular program installed on a computer. Most trojans disguise themselves as: images, audio files, video files, any program that can use the vulnerability of another piece of software.

How to Protect the Business from Cyberattacks

Understand What Data Your Company Collects and Make Sure that It Is Protected

To maintain your company data securely, you must perform an audit and determine the classification of your company data:

Public. Information that is classified as public includes data and files that are not critical to business needs, does not contain personal information or operations. This classification can also include data that has deliberately been released to the public for their use, such as marketing material or press announcements.
For internal use only. Information that is classified as sensitive, would not have a severe impact if lost or destroyed (email, excluding mailboxes from those identified as confidential). Types of data that can be considered sensitive such as extended personal data (for example, in the context of the Australian Privacy Laws, IP addresses, cookie identifiers, RFID tags, and location data. So, anything that is not confidential.
Confidential. This is typically Information that is classified as confidential or restricted can be catastrophic if compromised or lost (personal data, including personally identifiable information such as Medicare Number or national identification numbers, passport numbers, credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers, medical records, and health insurance policy ID number, financial records, or specific intellectual property, Legal data, including potential privileged material).

Install a Firewall on the Internet Gateway

Firewalls are designed to prevent unauthorized access to your business and/or home networks. You can set rules to determine which traffic is allowed and which is prohibited. A good firewall should monitor both inbound and outbound traffic. You can also block commonly used ports such as port ftp:21, Remote Desktop:3389 to name a couple.

Use Strong and Unique Passwords

Many ‘black hat’ hackers are selling your information after getting the data, including information on, if not millions, thousands of users and their passwords. If you use the same password on each account, gaining access to all of your systems will be a trivial task for a hacker. Or a hacker can use brute force to collect a password. This is much harder if the password is lengthy, consisting of different characters, and does not contain dictionary words/phrases. Use some password manager to remember for each unique service passwords. For example, a simple passphrase could be ‘idrinkcoffeeinthemorning’ that will take approximately 32 hours to crack where simple substitution ‘1dr1nkc0$$331nth3m0rn1ng’ 13 centuries using numbers and special characters. If you can use symbols, numbers, upper case, lower case the longer the better.

Update All Software

In the software that your company utilizes, hackers are always looking for new vulnerabilities to exploit. At the same time, software companies themselves are working hard to release patches in order to fix these vulnerabilities, so it is essential to update the software as soon as the update comes out. Hackers will exploit these zero-day vulnerabilities, to achieve either data exfiltration or just simply spying on your network for information they can sell such as any patented or intellectual property or maybe just to hold you to ransom. Most hackers are in networks for an average of 197 days before being detected.

Back Up All Data

Backups ensure that in case of data loss, files can be restored. You should always store data in different places, physically separated, so that hackers could not gain access to everything at once. Backups need to be run regularly. Using our backup service will guarantee both onsite and offsite backup will run and if you have been hit with ransomware our backup service not be affected by it.

Microsoft Office 365 and Security

Many organizations recognize the advantages of moving to Microsoft Office 365: accessibility of the network anywhere, anytime, simple access to email within and outside your organization, lowering activities and administrative costs. Although Microsoft Office 365’s advantages are starting to emerge, businesses still need to take measures to safeguard and manage information on Microsoft Office 365. Let’s talk about some tips for protecting Microsoft Office 365.

Security Policy

Deploy a password policy to secure your information and access using time limited password policy changing passwords every 40 to 90 days. Depending on user profiles, there are different settings for updating passwords. Passwords lose their significance for customers of cloud services by default after 90 days, whereas users synchronized with Active Directory follow the policy according to on premise settings. Password reset in self-service mode is freely accessible for cloud service customers. You can allow on-site system users to alter passwords for cloud services with Azure Active Directory. When resetting a password, there are four authentication methods available-via an office phone, mobile phone, email and security questions. As well as third-part applications such as DUO and Authy to give two-factor authentication.

Rights Management

Rights management uses encryption and an associated access policy to protect records and email. Documents can only be used for specific reasons by some consumers. You can set content compliance guidelines and generate offline access settings, as well as set document level policies that, for instance, stop an unauthorized user from opening a Word document that is saved to disk. An E3 Microsoft Office 365 license or an Azure Rights Management license is required for this alternative.

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Management of mobile devices helps safeguard information on apps used by users. MDM enables you to set access requirements, set distinct user strategies, handle mobile devices, and remove information from them, partly or entirely if needed. Since May 2015, MDM has been provided free of charge in Microsoft Office 365 commercial subscription packages.

Multi-Factor Authentication

In order to access Microsoft Office 365, multi-factor authentication needs more than a username and password. It can be set for each customer separately. Users receive a phone call or text message in addition to the typical username and password. Responding to a call or entering a received access code in a browser offers enhanced safety for authentication. Depending on the IP address, the system can switch on, only requiring extra code when accessing from government networks and disabling when working in the Office. In all Microsoft Office 365 plans, multi-factor authentication is a free choice. We would recommend MFA to secure your email system.

Advanced Threat Protection

Exchange Online Protection as part of a subscription protects all Exchange Online mailboxes. As an extra alternative to cope with such severe issues as phishing on behalf of trusted sources and malware attacks through application vulnerabilities, enhanced threat security is now accessible since 2015. We also recommend the deployment of a Microsoft Office 365 backup service to ensure another layer of protection for delete accounts and emails.

Deploying the Office Client

This technique of safety guarantees that Office’s client version is up-to-date by installing instant updates. Users can configure updates flexibly at particular periods of moment. You can control the situation through the Click2Run process based on XML, which is only available in subscription plans for Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus.

Content Sharing

The admin portal offers the capacity to allow or restrict content sharing. In Microsoft Office 365, you can monitor the use of the content, including locations, calendar, business skype, and other apps. There are reports displaying content sharing configurations. Without entering the application settings, the administrator can alter the settings straight from the management console.

Conclusion

I think that raising awareness and educating the public about these vulnerabilities can make Internet a bit safer. Engaging with your managed security service provider, simulating phishing for your staff and cyber insurance policies will be helpful for your company to know about such measures. Be aware that a threat can come from within the organization not always from outside. Always know you’re vulnerable to attack and be prepared for what’s going to happen.

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