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Business Resource Center - B2B Technology Articles
TECHNOLOGY: You may think it won’t happen to you
Security mishaps happen to everyone
One of our favorite questions to ask when in front of a group of people is: “have you ever received a letter informing you that your personal information has been compromised?” In this day and age, you might not be surprised to learn that almost everyone can raise their hand as a victim of some sort of “security breach.” And, unfortunately, the same is true for businesses. The fact is security breaches will happen to almost every business … some may be big and others will be small and virtually impossible to detect. But all can be extremely devastating and detrimental to your business, customers, and employees unless you take a layered approach: protect, detect, and respond.
Why protection just isn’t enough
The “protection” element in the layered approach of network/system security is one that most businesses think they have under control, and involves those things that put up physical “barriers” against hackers entering your network. It includes the firewalls, the anti-virus software, the spam protection, the security patches and updates. And, while these are all essential elements in preventing a breach from occurring, many business owners and managers make the mistake of stopping here, believing their systems are fully protected. The problem with this mentality is that it is based around perceptions of the hacking world from over 10 years ago.
In the past, hackers were typically in it for the glory. They wanted to break into systems with their worms and viruses, take as many down as possible, and show up on the evening news. And, while some of this still does exist, the majority of hacking today involves not the kid in his basement writing code, but sophisticated and organized crime units whose purpose is to break into your system undetected and leave it up and running. They want to sponge off your network, stealing information slowly over time, or latch on to your resources, using your server to send spam or host an illegal Web site.
You may say, “I have my firewall in place. I am protected.” Not true. Hackers are finding ways in that you may not think about. Take for example the employee that innocently opens an e-greeting card. Unknowingly, they may be putting your network at risk for a security breach. Similarly, hackers are able to capitalize on the vulnerabilities that are announced when a security patch update is issued. By knowing the problem the security patch corrects, hackers can search for networks that have failed to apply the appropriate patch, thereby breaching the system undetected. These are only a couple examples of how hackers can get in, which is why we stress that it is not a question of if they can get in, but when they do, will you detect it and what will you be able to do? This is where the detect and respond elements fit in.
What detection and response can do for you
With a plan for detection and response in place, a business owner can help protect the organization’s digital assets from being copied or stolen. The belief is that once a hacker has breached your system, you will have solutions in place (monitoring with alerts) that will notify you something is wrong. And, once detected, you can respond immediately to shut down the threat.
As an example, let’s say your organization’s system is breached when an employee unknowingly opens a compromised e-mail (like an e-greeting card). A hacker is now accessing your server to send thousands of spam messages with your domain name. Without detection and response, you would have no way of knowing someone had breached your system because they did so under cover of what appeared to be a friendly e-mail. What can ensue is a flood of spam from your domain name, causing multiple hosts to blacklist (or block) all mail from your domain, even the legitimate, non-spam. Now, your organization is unable to communicate with customers, vendors, and business associates through e-mail because you have been blocked. When detection and response are a part of your technology arsenal, however, you would be able to realize the breach had occurred and, therefore, stop the spam before it was sent in massive amounts, preventing your domain name from being blacklisted.
Why businesses are slow to adopt the model – and why they should move faster
Especially in the communities in Central Illinois, businesses tend to be relatively slow to adopt this model not because the threat doesn’t exist, but because people believe it won’t happen to them. They think you have to be big for a hacker to target you or that breaches can only occur from the outside or by disgruntled employees. Truth is, many breaches can occur just because an employee doesn’t know they shouldn’t open an e-mail, change a password, or apply security patches from multiple vendors on all computers (i.e., Microsoft patches only apply to Microsoft. Any third party software, like Adobe, that is run on a system has to be updated separately, and all computers have to be updated individually.)
Businesses that choose not to take a layered protect-detect-respond approach put themselves at great risk for significant loss. Most companies store information of great value, be it social security information for employees, credit card information for customers, or confidential information about the products/services you offer. Losing any or all of this information can create a loss of customers or employees, not to mention loss of reputation or goodwill in the larger community. And, it may have a great financial impact as you are faced with added expenditures, fines, or replacement costs for any secure information that was stolen or compromised. So, stop just protecting your network and work with your IT department or a local IT company to begin detecting and responding to threats when they occur.
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