Cybersecurity recommendations from Benjamin Dynkin and Atlas Cybersecurity right now? A desktop computer and a landline used to be all we needed for a solid day of work — simple, effective and fairly straightforward in terms of security. But now it’s a completely different story. Sure, many people do sit at a desk all day, but most of us carry around laptops, tablets, USB drives and smartphones, all of which we might use for both professional and personal reasons. This, clearly, is a security nightmare. Your company should have an official policy that advocates the separation of work and personal phones, as well as terms of use for business phones. Malware can enter at any point, and networked smartphones are a particularly weak point when they’re used for personal reasons. They might have better security than a purely personal phone, but when one is infected they can all go down. Find more info at Benjamin Dynkin.
Conduct an Inside Threat Analysis. An insider threat analysis will uncover any potential threats to your IT infrastructure that come from within your organization. This could be anything from employees and former employees to contractors, vendors, third party data suppliers or associates. Ensure that you have preparations to respond quickly and efficiently when you are faced with a cyber-attack. Communicate this plan to the rest of your organization and have someone in charge of ensuring the plan is carried out.
Minimize Location Sharing. It’s very common for travelers to update social networking sites as they move about new counties or cities. The problem with this type of excessive sharing is that it creates a security threat at home. By signaling your every location, you make it easy for a criminal to determine that you’re not in your hotel room or at your home, leaving your personal belongings within these areas vulnerable to a physical intrusion. Limit the information you post online about your specific whereabouts to limit these threats to your personal property.
Backing up your data regularly is an overlooked step in personal online security. The top IT and security managers follow a simple rule called the 3-2-1 backup rule. Essentially, you will keep three copies of your data on two different types of media (local and external hard drive) and one copy in an off-site location (cloud storage). If you become a victim of ransomware or malware, the only way to restore your data is to erase your systems and restore with a recently performed backup. Don’t use a public Wi-Fi without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). By using a VPN, the traffic between your device and the VPN server is encrypted. This means it’s much more difficult for a cybercriminal to obtain access to your data on your device. Use your cell network if you don’t have a VPN when security is important.
Benjamin Dynkin and Atlas Cybersecurity about data breaches: How do Data Breaches happen? The assumption is that a data breach is caused by an outside hacker, but that’s not always true. Reasons for how data breaches happen might sometimes be traced back to intentional attacks. However, it can just as easily result from a simple oversight by individuals or flaws in a company’s infrastructure. Here’s how a data breach can occur: An Accidental Insider. An example would be an employee using a co-worker’s computer and reading files without having the proper authorization permissions. The access is unintentional, and no information is shared. However, because it was viewed by an unauthorized person, the data is considered breached.