Threats 101: Danger on Your Network

While modern security solutions have made great strides to protect businesses, there are still a lot of threats out there that can create problems for your organization. If you don’t take a proactive stance on security, you could potentially expose your network to incoming threats of all kinds. We’ll help your business understand what threats are out there, why they are dangerous, and what you can do to keep your organization secure.

The Basics: Viruses and Malware
Your computer’s operating system is a software solution in and of itself; all devices on your network run an operating system in addition to a myriad of other software that can be exploited by threats. This is where viruses and malware come in. Viruses are little pieces of code that make changes to the code of your software. The results can vary from being a simple annoyance to a major waste of productivity and efficiency. Malware, in particular, can be extremely dangerous to your business. This “malicious software” can be used by hackers to steal, alter, or destroy data, so it can be quite damaging to your business.

The More Dangerous Threats: Ransomware and Spyware
More specialized types of malware are used to extort money from companies and steal data covertly without the business knowing. Ransomware has become a major threat to organizations, as it’s designed to coerce money from organizations by threatening to lock data away forever. Hackers like to use ransomware because it can collect a considerable amount of revenue due to the large amount of victims it can reach. Spyware is also in this vein of dangerous malware, as it can be used to install backdoors, keyloggers, and other types of covert threats that give hackers a way to slowly siphon data from businesses.

The Vehicle: Spam and Phishing Attacks
One of the biggest reasons why threats are so dangerous is because they are concealed in such a way that even the most well-trained employee could slip up and make a mistake. After all, you never hear about brute-force attacks being the main causes of data breaches (or, at least, they don’t happen as often in this way). The biggest and most devastating data breaches tend to occur over extended periods of time in which countless records are stolen without being noticed by security professionals or network administrators. To this end, spam and phishing campaigns are hackers’ best friends. How often do you receive emails enticing you to click on links or “claim your price?” How about messages that pose as others within your organization, or those who your business has a professional association with? These kind of spam and phishing attacks mean that vigilance is key to protecting your organization’s network.

Protect Your Business with Proactive Tools and Best Practices
While there are more threats these days than ever before, it’s never been easier to protect your business’ network infrastructure, especially with all of the great security features that your business can take advantage of. A Unified Threat Management solution combines the comprehensive security tools your organization needs to prevent infections and limit the scope of attacks against your network. You can take advantage of a firewall, antivirus, spam blocker and content filter to prevent and detect threats on your network before they can cause too much damage. By limiting access to data on a user basis, you can also keep specific data much safer than it would be otherwise. In general, it’s best to use industry best practices to only share data with those who need it for their specific roles within your organization.

For more information about how to keep your business secure from threats, reach out to the security expects at JensenIT via (847) 803-0044.