Insider Threat for an Organization: Data Breaches

A business isn’t a business without advertising. The goal is always to gain more business. To take your business to the next level you’re going to need know the first few things about the internet. The internet can provide a wide network of people, plenty of whom will be interested in what you have to offer, but you need to reach them. You and your employees will need to understand how to navigate the internet to engage in the transactions of money and information safely. The larger your business the harder this becomes and the breaches can come in a variety of forms.

Keystroke loggers are programs that track the keys pressed on your keyboard in attempts to recollect where passwords are placed. Other programs breach unsecured password locations or consist of hackers trying to guess off of personal material. Some people install malware by posing ads that often advertise unlikely possibilities like a getaway vacation that only requires your email address. They then upload software that impairs your computer’s ability to function.

Phishing is similar to Malware in that it is often disguised as an ad to avoid detection. Phishing, however requires that you provide a piece of personal information to the site before it can do damage. Do not provide credit card information or social security codes to unofficial sites. Ransomware is a type of breach that locks a user out of financial, employer, and customer information until an amount of money is transferred. This is most commonly accessed through spam mail that requires opening an attached file of a sort that allows the breach. The most common security breaches, however come from someone physically having access to an administrator’s computer or an administrator sending out sensitive information over email, then an employee simply mishandles it. The consequences of a breech usually end with the same few results.

Money is often the main motive. It can be to sabotage a reputation or disable the ability of a business to function if only temporary. It can be to steal health records from someone’s work to aid in identity theft or stealing the knowledge one has about a highly prized intellectual concept developed among a group of people. But how can the average tech user secure their valuable information exchanged with their business?

First is the importance of securing passwords. Easily predicted passwords are poor ones and here, complexity means security. Do not use passwords like your middle name or first name and birthday. Do not use the same password over and over and over again. This helps prevent the most basic level password crooks from accessing your information. T

he next basic step to hacker prevention is making sure the physical access to computers is not too easy for any intruders in an office. Make sure that all employers are logged off before they leave. Do not give out passwords loosely. It is a reasonable suggestion to invest in technology that allows higher-ups to see when employees are logged in and out of employer devices. They should also be able to see what all devices are connected to the networks. Be careful sending sensitive information in mass emails. Make sure the people you’re sending it to are trustworthy and be sure to seize what information belongs to you before firing employees. Employees need to be kept up to date on how to safely manage sensitive information. They need to know guidelines for what senders they can open things from. They should be well versed in recognizing advertisements that could have malicious intent lingering behind. Purchasing programs to do regular network scans can detect benign software from avoiding detection.

Another way that our computers can help us protect our information is by backing our information up. This way people aiming to secure information by means installing ransomware, we are not held captive when our information is frozen, as we have another way to access it. Encryption policies can be enforced to make data certain date hard to read or unreadable to outsiders. Applying vulnerability assessments is a way to find weaknesses in your defense system and address them before someone else exposes weaknesses. One simple fix is disabling cookies from saving passwords and transactions on a site. This has the ability to give ease of access to its users but provide a large handful of information to a hacker in one small space. Do not allow your employees to install software that has not been approved by you or your technical staff.

Last but not least, it is important to constantly update your antimalware software, as the hackers are constantly getting better and smarter so your defense mechanisms need to do the same. The ways a hacker can obtain information from a business stretch far and wide, but the prevention methods run just as long. These are some of the more basic methods that an entrepreneur can get familiar with and in time employ as methods to fight security breaches of prized property. Many of these requires investing a reasonable amount of funds, but over 70% of data leaking incidents occur accidentally by employees who are simply uninformed users. Most data breaches can be contained by inspiring a culture of well-educated end-users so it is always important that employees are very clear of the do’s and don’ts of computer policy under your roof.