XL.net CEO Adam Radulovic recently hosted a webinar with Ice Miller LLP. They talked about their real-world experiences with client cyber attacks, information loss and data breaches. With their combined experience, they offer these six lessons on how to protect your digital data and, in effect, your company and clients.
Watch the webinar for full discussion >>
Six things you can do to protect yourself from cyber attack:
1. Be prepared for a cyber attack
When the worst happens, it happens fast. Your website goes down. Access to important business information disappears. A hacker organization is demanding money, threatening to increase the ransom if they are not paid quickly.
What do you do?
Having an IT management company on retainer is the least. Your managed IT service provider, like XL.net, can help limit and prevent cyber attacks from happening in the first place (to a certain extent).
Maybe you’re asking yourself, “Am I at risk for a cyber attack?”
Yes, yes you are.
And having cyber attack insurance can help you address, pay and fix any malicious data breaches your company experiences. For more on cybersecurity insurance, read our blog, “Do I need Cybersecurity Insurance?”
2. Verify where you send payments
Between fake invoices and criminals going as far as using voice manipulation software to sound like you vendors, companies can be tricked into paying company-dollars to strangers.
You can use a two-party authorization system when sending money to a new wire location, can put in place regulations when a payment is over a set dollar threshold and can use voice verification software when talking to colleagues on the phone.
3. Backup data and test recoverability
Some malicious behavior online encrypts important data so you can no longer access it. If you have backups saved outside of your internal systems and routinely test the recoverability of that information, then you know your company won’t struggle too much to get back to their feet if the pertinent details in your system are ever encrypted or lost.
4. Know what data you have
No one knows your business like you do, and no one knows what information is critical to your work and your clients’ privacy like you do. Assess the information you have saved in your systems and determine if you even need that information. If you don’t, remove it. Identify what information is really sensitive and do what extra measures you must to protect those details.
And, if you store the information of clients and/or employees that no longer work with you, consider removing those details from your system altogether. If a cyber attacks happens, their information will also be at risk despite the working relationship being in the past.
5.Carefully review all invoices
Be curious and maybe even a little suspicious of invoices. You never want to be in a situation where you paid an invoice that turned out to be fraudulent. Not only have you paid a criminal, but the relationship you have with the vendor you thought you were paying is at stake–you’ve paid the money just not to them.
There is insurance you can get to protect yourself against such incidents.
6. Beware the malicious insider
Of course we want to think the best of our employees, but as a business owner–specifically a small- to medium-sized business owner–you need to be mindful of who is doing what and whether there is an oversight procedure in place.
To lessen the likelihood of anything nefarious happening internally, you can implement these simple things:
- Separate responsibilities among different people.
- Enhance the approval process, having things go through several people.
- Make vacations mandatory so tasks eventually have to be passed around and nothing can stay hidden.
- Cross-train so multiple people in the company understand how things are done.
- Surprise-test for quality control.
For business solution to help you company, contact XL.net today
Strategic IT is all about aligning your company’s technology with its business goals. From productivity-boosting software implementations to a user-focused help desk, IT can affect many different areas of a business. In addition to efficiency and user satisfaction, it can also play a significant role in meeting sales goals, budgeting, market research and many other areas, which is why it’s so important to have a purposeful, wide-reaching strategy for your IT.
Whether you need an IT strategy or your existing one isn’t cutting it, XL.net can help. We offer strategic IT services throughout Chicago, IL and the surrounding area.
Contact us to start your better strategy today.