Data Net Blog

We aren’t shy in terms of talking about phishing, its dangers, and what can be done to prevent it. However, it can be too easy to focus directly on email phishing and exclude the many other forms that phishing can and often does take.

Take, for instance, smishing.

It’s more important than ever to know just how much your business currently spends (and should plan to spend) on cybersecurity, both of which can be addressed by understanding the goal of cybersecurity protections and how they affect your company’s defenses. Let’s consider how much you should spend on cybersecurity, as well as what protections that spending can afford.

Hackers and scammers are everywhere and are continuously littering your business with situations that could put its operations in jeopardy. One of the most hacked industries is healthcare, as hackers make a point at going after patient information. Let’s go through some of the reasons why hackers find health data so attractive. 

Cybersecurity is a complicated beast. Not only do you have to be sure that you’re protected from threats coming from outside your business, there are also a few very real threats that can originate from inside your business, too. Both are critical to prevent, which can be quite effectively accomplished via a zero trust approach to your security.

The Internet of Things, or IoT for short, showcases just how much a little bit of Internet connectivity can do to help make certain devices much more interesting and useful, but at the same time, it also has brought about a considerable security concern. How are you preventing these devices from ravaging your network security, and what can you do to stop it from putting your company at risk?

A modern network, when properly configured and protected with modern cybersecurity tools, can be extremely secure. Since that’s been the trend for some organizations over the years, hackers have been looking for ways around the security many businesses have in place. If hackers can’t break in through normal means, they will turn to other, more insidious methods, like phishing attacks, to get what they are after.

The Federal Trade Commission has developed their Safeguards Rule for one purpose: To set up a guideline on how to interact, store, and use customer information. The FTC enacted the Rule in 2003, but it was heavily amended in 2021 to ensure that it keeps up with the technology used by businesses today. It outlines the policies and procedures that all covered companies need to enact.

A VPN—or virtual private network—is something that we recommend any business implementing any form of remote or hybrid work to have in their cybersecurity arsenal. Let’s explore why this is by examining what a VPN does, and what any business should seek out in the one they use.

Weak passwords are one of the leading causes of cybercrime, identity theft, and data breaches. Sure, it’s easy to say it, but this time we wanted to demonstrate just how easy it is to crack a wimpy password. 

For the growing business, doing the right things to secure your network and data is a constantly evolving situation. For larger businesses, they tend to approach the situation with a different perspective. They plan out the whole process. This is what is called enterprise security.  Let’s take a look at what enterprise security entails and how the little guy can benefit from doing things like larger companies do them. 

There are a huge number of apps available on the various app stores—3.5 million and 1.6 million on the Google Play store and Apple’s App Store, respectively—and, while most of them are sufficiently secure to use, many of them aren’t. It can be hard to tell the difference between the two at times, so it is important that you and your team are protecting your business however you can. Let’s discuss the topic of security, as it pertains to mobile app stores, and why the issues have transcended security.

Cybersecurity has gradually become more and more of a focus for modern businesses as threats to their data and general operations have mounted over time. This means that businesses need to approach their security with a multifaceted strategy, involving a combination of the right tools and IT support and the training to use them. Let’s take a few moments to dive into security training and why it is so critical.

Uh oh. You were trying to be more secure and decided to set up multi-factor authentication. However, you’ve just discovered how important the other factors are when it comes to authenticating your identity. Yes, you’ve found yourself unable to access your means of authenticating yourself.

So…what do you do now?

Phishing is a word that has a couple of different meanings, depending on the spelling and context. Fishing, like the act of sitting down with a pole and trying to catch a fish, can be a relaxing, leisurely activity. Phishing, with a “ph,” is anything but that, and it can be a tiring and scary situation to navigate—particularly if you or one of your employees have fallen victim to an attack.

Phishing is a pressing issue for everyone, not just businesses. The main problem is that the phishing messages keep getting more and more sophisticated and keep coming and coming until, eventually, something negative happens. For this week’s tip, we wanted to discuss the different types of phishing you can encounter. 

Last week, we went through why training is such a crucial part of your business’ cybersecurity process. This week we will turn our attention to some of the tools and other strategies that your organization should be using to mitigate security threats. 

Admit it, you don’t know all that much about cybersecurity. In this blog, we spend a lot of time discussing security issues. After all, today there are more threats than ever and many different types of problems that IT administrators, business decision-makers, and even individual employees have to deal with. Over the next two weeks, we have decided to discuss the reality of cybersecurity and what you need to know to get out in front of it. 

We make a consistent point to urge our readers to take their organizational cybersecurity seriously. This is because there are threats out there that are targeting your business, no matter how small it is. This week, we take a break from the itemized list of security tips to present 2022’s most devastating cyberattacks to give you an idea what hackers today can do.

The COVID pandemic forced businesses all over the world to adopt remote work practices, whether they were ready for them or not, and it wound up establishing full-fledged remote and hybrid positions which may never have existed otherwise. However, with these new developments come new threats, and you need to be ready to handle them as they crop up.

Unfortunately, the number of cyberattacks is consistently growing and many of those attacks target business end users. This means that any account that requires a password for access could conceivably be compromised should attackers gain access to its credentials. At Data Net, we promote the use of multi-factor authentication (also known as two-factor authentication or 2FA) to mitigate some of the risk inherent with the use of password-based accounts in business.