Folks, cyber threats are very real. After leaving my 'Cyber Security for You and Your Clients' class at Scaling New Heights 2018, many of the 200 (or so) attendees reported that I scared the 'you know what' out of them (just as I did in 2017). In fact, John Torvi, the VP of Marketing and Sales for Landy Insurance told me that he saw a significant 'rush' to his booth by attendees wanting to discuss Landy's offering in the area of Cyber-risk Insurance.
If you didn't get the opportunity to attend the course I thought it would be a good idea to go into some of the factors you would have learned had you been there. While I wrote one or two 'primers' about the course in the 5 months prior to the conference, the content in those is much broader in concept and a little less 'to the point' than what I will present in this little mini-series.
Understanding that YOU are a Target
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One of the hardest thing to do is convince everyone, including other ProAdvisors as well as the typical small business client with whom ProAdvisors mostly work, that cyber crime is in fact a reality that is just waiting for the opportunity to 'bite them on the behind.' Whether you’re a small business with a handful of employees, or a huge international company with tens of thousands of personnel spread across the planet, EVERYONE is a target for malware.
It doesn’t matter if the cyber-criminals are out to steal your data to snatch credit card numbers (just as then did within the past few days from the City of Midwest City, Oklahoma), or hold you ransom in order to get your own data back working, absolutely no business or individual is exempt from potential attack. If you have 'other peoples information' on your computer or network, you are risking your entire business if you come under attack and that information is stolen.
Then ask yourself, how would you, or one of your clients respond if they came in one morning and found that they couldn't access any information on any of their computers because they were encrypted with ransomware? Would you (or they) have a plan to clean their machines, restore their data, and get back to work? Or would they struggle until they finally 'paid the ransom' to recover their own data?
If you learn nothing else from this article learn this...big or small, monumental or incidental, even a single 'record' is worth something and cyber criminals are out to make money one way or another. Their vicious attacks are 'money motivated' and nothing else.
Knowing the Cyber-threat Vectors and Securing them
Malware attacks exploit multiple attack vectors. The most common is user behavior, but other vectors include your computer applications and your IT system as a whole. Human weakness and the underlying belief by business personnel that 'nobody would want our data' is by far the number one culprit that allows (no, really invites) cyber-criminals in the door.
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The main avenues for malware attack are your email, web applications, remote access by users, careless users on-site, and your network perimeter. As businesses become more 'mobile', and more 'worker friendly' allowing employees to work from home, the easier it is becoming for cyber-criminals to find cracks in your Information Technology system so that they can plant a virus, Trojan or any of the thousands-upon-thousands of malware variants.
An improperly configured 'firewall port' is like drilling a whole through the brick wall of your house, and then drizzling honey down the outside wall after smearing it in the hole so that every insect for a thousand miles is immediately headed to your house for supper. And in reality, a simple software firewall isn’t sufficient to keep you safe, and even a hardware firewall may not do the trick.
Chances are you may have an 'alarm system' on your office or office building. Maybe you have closed-circuit cameras recording everything that takes during both business and after hours. While you take a few precautions to keep help prevent one or two thieves from breaking in to steal your stuff, you don't take the same level of precaution when it comes to your 'mission critical data.'
You really need a comprehensive cyber-security system to prevent the hundreds-of-thousands of cyber-criminals from trying to break-in (almost all at once) so that you can prevent a malware attack via all the vectors we identified earlier in this section. In most cases your local ‘IT guy’ doesn’t have the resources needed to protect you, you really want a cyber-security expert.
As a general rule, start by contacting your actual Internet Provider (the cable company or your local DSL provider, etc.). Many of these Internet Providers have experts on staff who will consult with you (sometimes for free). Some of these companies can also provide you with the name of several reliable experts who can help you with risk identification, prevention, and response-plan development.
Don't be mislead into believing that 'cloud computing' solves the problem
A lot of 'cloud computing' companies will try to convince you that your data is totally secure because it is not 'in their cloud'. If you believe that then let me tell you about the 'hosting company' that got hit by Ransomware....and no that isn't a joke.
While there are many benefits of migrating to virtual and cloud environments, the result is a shift in the technology supporting your access to those environments. You actually need more internet capabilities since everyone is accessing the data across the internet rather than on your own server, or each others computers. This means that you now have a 'hybrid network' that is still connecting all the computers in your office, and also is acting as the pipeline to get everyone accelerated internet service so as to connect with the cloud hosted or SAAS-based applications you are using.
You actually are now sending your data across the internet to be stored elsewhere hoping that they are 'totally secure' and that the connection between you and them is also secure. But what happens in the event of a breach? If your data is not accessible from your cloud resources? Or your data is intercepted while streaming to or from those cloud resources?
Do you have a plan, do you have a backup, are you ready for the consequences of lost data? You are indeed still vulnerable to cyber-criminals and malware attach even when using cloud-based technology. And what would happen if your host was attacked by Ransomware and you wanted to pay the ransom for your data, but your host told you 'absolutely not'?
Now ask yourself one more question, "do you even know if you can actually have your own backup of your data stored at your cloud-hosting company or SAAS provider?" It certainly is 'food for thought', or perhaps even cause to take a Zantac.
That's about all we have time for in today's article, so be on the lookout for Part 2 as I do my best to "scare the 'you know what' out of you too."