Are you safe from online threats?
Whether you're a business, you're working from home or you're a personal customer, in a world of increasing connectivity, you are at ever increased risk. Ask yourself these four simple questions:
- Are your devices safe?
- Are your files safe?
- Are you & your team / family safe?
- Is your network / WiFi safe?
Are your devices safe?
- Are all your devices protected? Computers, Laptops, Tablets & Mobile phones are all at risk.
- Is your antivirus robust enough, and is it up-to-date? There are new threats all the time, with antivirus products requiring updates several times per day.
- Are you regularly & consistently updating your Firmware, Operating System (OS) & Applications (Apps) on all devices? Hackers can actively working to exploit new vulnerabilities.
- Do you know if your devices are secure from physical theft? Just having a password is not enough - the hard drive can be removed to bypass this. Consider the GDPR implications of your customer data being exposed. There's the financial cost & reputational damage to consider.
Are your files safe?
- Saving to the cloud is not a backup - this is the biggest misconception we come across. OneDrive, Google Drive & iCloud are not backup services. They provide access to files in one place from multiple devices to eliminate data redundancy. But if just one of those became compromised, the changes will replicate across the cloud. For example, ransomware will lock your valuable files or photographs - requiring a large "ransom" payment to release them. It's not guaranteed that they will provide the password, and we do not recommend paying ransoms, as this funds criminal activity. Therefore you need a backup service
- If you do take backups, do you regularly check them? Are you following the 3-2-1 rule? Are they immutable? These are some of the things you need to consider to comply with your cyber insurance if you're a business & it's good practice as an individual. We've come across instances where a backup is required, and the external hard drive has failed, and they had no other backup system in-place. When backups were being taken, staff simply plugged it in, rotated it and expected it to run - without any checking.
- If you're a business, are your emails backed up? We regularly have clients wanting to restore accidently deleted emails, or for auditing purposes when staff have deleted emails.
Are you & your team safe?
Wait, don't tell me.. you're using the same password, right?
With so many online accounts, it's much less hassle to re-use the same password, but by doing this, you are putting yourself at risk. No matter their size, all organisations are at risk of cyber attack, so if you've shared your email address and a password with them, they are at risk of exposure. Should they be compromised, hackers will try the same username and password combination with common email, shopping and payment services.
Check for yourself,
Have I Been Pwned: Check if your email has been compromised in a data breach
Is your network / WiFi safe?
As technology advances, more devices are being connected to your WiFi. When devices are on your WiFi, they can talk to each other and hackers can exploit this.
Do you give our your WiFi password to family & friends? Do you know if their devices are safe?
Have you considered what would happen if your smart speaker, thermostat, cameras, doorbell were compromised?
- Attackers could use your internet connection for malicious purposes such as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, this could lead to your internet service provider issuing warnings and switching off your service
- Attackers could use sensitive information from cameras, photo's, videos & files for blackmail
- Attackers could encrypt your personal files, photo's, music & videos and make you pay a ransom to unlock them