.....and things that go BUMP in the night

Make no mistake - there are people who love being malicious, there are people who are inclined to thievery, and those who just want to destroy your business. These people range from the infamous 'fourteen year-old hack' in New Mexico with nothing better to do, to the former employee out to seek revenge.

Unfortunately, many of you just don't seriously believe that your business information assets will be targeted by these malcontents until it's too late.

Generally, the first thing that comes to mind in discussing 'technology security' issues is protecting the perimeter - that point where your network connects to the rest of the world. Be it your website or your email, the applicability of perimeter protection is overplayed. In a small to medium business environment these perimeter issues should be outsourced to an ISP with proper measures in hand to handle massive amounts of filtering for viruses and malware. Using economies of scale ISPs can afford the required resources to protect your business along with thousands of others. With a reputable ISP, 80% of security problems can be mitigated.

Ironically, the remaining 20% of the security problems have historically cause the most damage. Truth be known - most of these attacks can be prevented by simple cost-effective measures.

Risk assessment is the first step is any cost-effective set of information security strategies. Simply put -ensure that the most valuable information assets receive the protection they deserve. In the process of determining those 'most valuable assets' , you will be forced to prioritize all information assets - this is an enlightening experience. Prioritizing value then leads to finding ways to protect those assets. By delegating resources to methods like frequent backups, enhanced redundancies, physical security measures, strong ACS, data encryption, intrusion detection - you can regain control and mitigate losses to a de minimis level. For more information on securing your business information assets CONTACT US for free risk assessment!

 

.....INTO THE LIGHT!