Advanced Technology Cybersecurity Risks and What to Do About It

cyber security

Cybersecurity for modern businesses is always attempting to stay ahead of the increasingly more complex security threats from hackers and cybercriminals. Companies will continue to invest in technology to enhance their business. As technology evolves, so do the cyber security threats that can infiltrate a business’s network. No company is immune, where smaller enterprises or large government agencies, even with today’s securities.

The Risks of Modern Technology

Technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, cloud services, and more allow businesses to streamline their processes and accomplish more efficiently and accurately in a shorter timeline. With more technology comes greater risk as cyber criminals consistently innovate and find new ways to steal data from businesses of any size. 

Advancements such as automation remove human error and provide a more efficient way of doing business, but it doesn’t come without increased risks. Cybercriminals have highly sophisticated tools and capabilities using the very technology that businesses use to streamline their processes. 

When your business invests in technology, it’s important to invest in robust and aggressive cyber security that protects data and your business’s networks. A comprehensive review of your cybersecurity practices should be reviewed regularly. You want to consider the following: 

  • Do your employees have enough training to be an asset rather than a vulnerability?
  • Are the security measures currently in place enough to protect your business against threats and risks? 
  • Is your business prepared and looking ahead at the developing and evolving cyber threats and risks that are likely to emerge with new technologies?

The Current Evolving Threat Landscape

If your business is going to be prepared for advanced threats, it’s important to stay up to date with the current threats that can impact your business. Here are a few ideas on how to protect your business from developing threats.

Malware – Malware is becoming increasingly harder to find. Malware is getting better at mimicking user behavior as it is better at hiding their actions. To fight this threat, you need to ensure your team is trained to be able to spot malware or use automated security solutions to help you catch malware before it becomes a major problem.

More Technology Means More Vulnerability – More technology may be beneficial for businesses, but more technology means you have more to protect from attacks. Increased risk management and streamlining technologies to make IT less complex can help protect your business. 

Increase Upper Management Awareness – Often in companies, the upper levels of the corporate hierarchy remain blissfully unaware of the security issues and threats as they believe these risks are to be handled by the IT team. Cyber attacks can impact any level of a business, and it’s important to ensure everyone, including high-level executives, have a base awareness of the threats and what to look for. 

Need Help Securing Your Business

Working with us as your managed IT service can help ensure your data is protected against any cybersecurity threat your business may encounter. You can get back to focusing on running your business while we focus on protecting your business from cyber threats. To learn more, give us a call at (516) 536-5006.

Understanding Scams: How to Protect Your Business 

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While we try our hardest to ensure there are enough security measures to make it a safe place, the internet can still be a dangerous place. People fall victims to scams every day as scams continue to evolve and become smarter. Scammers can find their way into your email, texts, and ads easily by creating realistic links that you can easily believe are legitimate. Businesses are no strangers to having to deal with costly scams. Why are some people more likely to fall for scams than others, and how do you stop your employees from inadvertently engaging in scams and costing your company?

How Do Scams Continue to Survive?

Online scams are a million-dollar industry that affects individuals and organizations worldwide. As tech advances and the world becomes more connected, scammers continue to adapt, thrive, and succeed in the business of scamming people. Plenty of companies exist with the sole purpose of scamming, and it’s becoming more common as the costs of running these scams continue to decrease and become easier.

Scammers often operate in countries with little regulation and laws that prevent them from operating, making it challenging to locate those responsible for the scams. There are a lot of techniques, methods, and types of scams that they use to bypass security and pass as legitimate in a way that tricks everyday people into clicking on their links, answering their phone calls, or responding to emails.

People will likely fall for scams because scammers often target vulnerability and familiarity. It’s a numbers game where they send thousands of emails and only receive a small handful of responses, but it’s just enough. 

When scammers target businesses, they use familiar brands or even the name of someone within your organization to request sensitive information. If an employee is not prepared or educated on the risk of scams, especially if the scammer is friendly and appears legitimate, the employee may ignore the warning signs. They usually end up fulfilling the request giving the scammer the information they need to complete their scam.

How to Protect Your Business

Thousands of scam emails, texts, and ads make their rounds every day, and it’s becoming more likely that you and your employees will come across a scam at some point in your life. One of the most efficient ways to protect your business from scams is to ensure your employees are educated and informed on what to look for and steps to take if a scam makes its way through network security. Here are some essential tips to help you avoid falling victim to scams.

  • Always remain cautious with every email and text message you receive. If you are suspicious, verify the sender’s identity through other means of communication.
  • Look for some common signs of phishing, including unreasonable demands, suspicious attachments, spelling or grammatical errors, or if you don’t recognize the contact information.
  • Ensure you have security software installed to help filter out scam emails, and always keep your systems and software up to date.
  • Always have a backup of your data if a scam does make it through. Implement a backup and disaster recovery solution utilizing on-site data storage and off-site data centers.

Get started protecting your business today with a security solution from AE Technology Group. To get started, give us a call at (516) 536-5006.

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Security Issues You Can Encounter on Your Mobile Device

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Many businesses provide their employees with a mobile device to help with their daily work tasks. When it comes to mobile devices, not many people are aware of the security risks that come along with using them. You want to be able to provide enough security for mobile devices to protect against external security threats without hindering productivity or your employees feeling overly restricted by your policies. To help you find appropriate mobile security practices, we put together a list of the three top issues you should plan for and how you can properly address them.

Malicious Applications

Applications are similar to the software of programs you download on your computer. Some applications can offer many services, from communication to data storage or communication. While many apps you shop for on both Android and iOS are legitimate, there are apps developed by cyber criminals designed to disguise themselves as credible apps that can provide you with a solution. You never want to download apps from developers you are unfamiliar with or that you don’t recognize. 

Unsecured Connections

When people use their mobile devices, they usually don’t want to burn through their data, so they opt to connect to whatever Wi-Fi is available. The big problem with Wi-Fi networks is that most publicly accessible Wi-Fi networks are unsecured. When they are secured, they aren’t appropriately secured. Using an unsecured Wi-Fi puts users at risk when sending data to and from devices. Hackers can easily steal information in transit. They can even mimic public Wi-Fi to trick users into connecting to it to steal their data. 

Lost or Stolen Devices

Mobile devices can be easily misplaced or stolen when they leave the office environment. Losing a personal device can cause a lot of stress, but losing a device with sensitive company data can be more stressful. It can be impactful to not only you but your company if anyone gets a hold of your device and can easily access the stored data.

Security Solutions

With such a diverse range of malicious mobile threats, you want to be sure you are optimizing security while still getting the most out of your mobile device. An effective solution needs to be able to detect and respond to security threats quickly and still provide a positive experience. These security solutions can help you safeguard your devices and data from external threats while ensuring your users can remain productive on their devices.

Mobile Device Management: Comprehensive MDM solutions allow you to control app downloads on devices and remotely wipe lost or stolen devices should the need arise. MDMs make it easy to track account access and information about the devices through a remote MDM tool.

Virtual Private Networks (VPN): One big way to protect devices is through a virtual private network or VPN. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the data it’s accessing, meaning hackers cannot simply observe or steal data being sent to or from each location.

To get started with any of the above security measures, contact AE Technology Group at 516.536.5006.

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What Might Cyberattacks Look Like in the Future?

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Cybersecurity has been a major concern since the 1970s before the internet itself was around. As technology evolves, cybersecurity grows with it. If recent current events are any indication, cyber threats aren’t going away anytime soon. So, how can you protect yourself and your business from Cyber attacks in the future? And what will these cyber attacks look like?

Let’s take a few moments to consider some of the current cyber threats, how they’ll influence cyberattacks in the future, and what you can do to protect your information.

Modern Cyberthreats

To properly predict the future of cyber attacks, we need to dive into what’s happening today. Currently, there are a few specific threat vectors that are extremely popular among cybercriminals. These are the cyberattacks you often hear about in the news or read about on social media. To properly understand how to protect your business, you’ll have to gain some knowledge about what these threats are.

Phishing & Ransomware

One of the most common methods used by cybercriminals today is phishing. This is the use of deceit and deception to fool a person into divulging personal information, such as a password or credit card number, to a scammer. The scammer is typically pretending to be a reputable company offering its services.

Phishing is also often used to spread ransomware, which places malware on the target’s device, encrypting their information until the ransom is paid. They often target businesses with sensitive information that they cannot risk losing, so they are forced to pay the ransom to remove the encryption and regain access to their files.

Identity Theft

Unfortunately, and perhaps, unsurprisingly, the recent financial assistance given to so many citizens created a spike in identity theft cases. Cybercriminals gained information through the pandemic assistance, unemployment benefits, and data that was stolen from Facebook and LinkedIn.

Hacking

Hackers access your information through cybersecurity holes like weak passwords, IoT and IIoT devices without sufficient protections, and even insider threats. These all leave your business vulnerable to attack and should be corrected immediately.

How will Cyberattacks Change in the Future?

Based on how cyberattacks have evolved in the past, we predict that they’ll actually look very similar in the future. Cybercriminals simply learn to use new advances in technology to change their method of attack.

Some major cyber threats we’re predicting are the use of deepfakes and artificially mimicked voices to bypass access controls, and hacking voice assistants (We’re looking at you, Alexa) to gain sensitive information. 

While the method of attack may be slightly different, they’ll probably look a lot like how they appear today. So, what can you do to protect your business?

How to Protect Your Business from Cyberattacks

  • Lock Down your Hardware

We mean it… lock it down. Your hardware should be protected both by cybersecurity software on your devices and network and in terms of access controls and physical security. Cybercriminals are going to intentionally go for an easy target, so make it as difficult as possible for them to access your info.

  • 2. Encrypt your Data

Even the most secure cybersecurity plan may not be able to prevent your information from getting into the wrong hands, that’s where encryption comes in. Encrypting your data will ensure that, if it is stolen, it is effectively useless to the cybercriminal. 

  • Teach your Staff about Cybersecurity

Anyone who has access to even the slightest shred of your information should be up to date on modern cybersecurity threats and how to protect themselves. Schemes like phishing and hacking are typically successful because people are not educated on cybersecurity. Incorporating a security-first mindset into your company culture will do a lot more than you might expect it to.

As we mentioned, cybersecurity will only become more important as technological advances are made. To truly protect your business, contact a professional. 

AE Technology Group is here to help put your business on the right foot moving forward. Give us a call at (516) 536-5006 to learn more about the cybersecurity tools and protections we can implement for you.

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Firewalls: The Unsung Heroes Network Security

Shield Firewall protection hacker illustration

The term firewall is not a new one, and it’s not as old of a term as you might think. Before it became commonplace in the computing environment, it was first introduced to the world in 1983 when it was used in a movie titled WarGames. Nowadays, it is used mostly in regard to network security. Let’s take a look at what a firewall does and what the different types of firewalls do.

First, What Does a Firewall Do?

A firewall’s name comes from the structures built into connected homes and multi-family residences that protect individual units from fires. A residential firewall keeps a fire from spreading, while a computing firewall monitors your network traffic for unauthorized connections. A properly configured firewall is a critical part of any cybersecurity strategy.

Firewall Varieties

There are many different types of firewalls out there. Here are just a few examples:

Virtual Firewall

A virtual firewall is hosted in the cloud. It protects an environment that is hosted in the cloud or within a virtual machine. You can customize your virtual firewall to suit your specific needs, be it for a specific application or to protect an entire cloud environment.

Stateful Inspection Firewall

Most modern infrastructures include this version of a firewall. It performs a function called dynamic packet filtering, a process that involves all traffic passing through a firewall being analyzed to ensure it is in the correct state, i.e. not infected by threats or otherwise.

Unified Threat Management Firewall

In addition to the aforementioned benefits, a UTM firewall also includes antivirus software. UTMs are designed to be a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none solution. They work for many smaller businesses as a part of their network infrastructure to keep users and data protected.

Is a Firewall a Requirement for Your Business’ Cybersecurity?

In short, yes, although it should be mentioned that true cybersecurity includes much more than just a simple firewall. A firewall is only one piece of your cybersecurity strategy, so you will need even more safeguards put into place to keep your company as secure as possible from threats.

AE Technology Group can equip your business with the best security tools out there. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.