Summer is the time for beaches, mountain hikes and relaxing, but it is also a popular time for cyberattacks as hackers take advantage of employees who log in remotely using public WiFi and fewer IT staff in the office to respond quickly to threats.
Here are some of the examples of major hacks that have occurred the past few summers:
- June 2018: Cryptocurrency-Mining Bot targets devices running SSH Service. It uses infected machines to mine for cryptocurrency, consuming considerable amounts of electricity and computing power.
- June 2017: The NotPetya cyber attack did not target a specific company, and is estimated to have cost companies $1.2billion.
- May 2017: WannaCry ransomware infected 200,000 computers across 150 countries, encrypting critical data where organizations without backups could not access it.
- July 2016: World Anti-Doping Agency hacked, releasing Olympic athlete data to the public.
- June 2016: Yahoo! Data breach grabs usernames, passwords, date of birth and security questions for approximately 500 million accounts.
- July 2015: Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison website, was hacked and released personal information for 37 million users and the corporate emails of Avid Life CEO who later resigned.
- June 2015: US Office of Personnel Management hacked, grabbing personal information on up to 22 million background check applicants and 4.2 million federal workers.
NotPetya and WannaCry are examples of attacks that may have originally had a larger corporate target in mind but were indiscriminate in infecting any organization. Small businesses struggled with infections and disrupted business as well as large corporations.
Improved Firewalls
The primary purpose of a firewall is intrusion prevention (IPS) or shutting out hackers trying to access your network. Firewalls are set up with rules that help them identify what application activity is expected and permitted, and this starts with identifying what “ports” are open. If an application or hacker attempts to use a port that isn’t permitted, they are prevented from accessing the network. Small businesses should be using a business-grade firewall that provides enhanced security, reporting, and control over who accesses your network.
arielMIS’s security service goes beyond the basics, leveraging Fortinet’s firewall to provide additional capabilities:
- Application Control. Traditional firewalls manage network ports to try to stop dangerous behavior, but application control tracks application usage and keeps out risky and dangerous applications from the Internet and between network segments. A better understanding of applications means capable prioritization of safe traffic and faster detection of risky network traffic.
- Faster Network Speeds. Network security often comes with the trade-off of throttling network speeds, as it takes time even for an automated system to check the millions of bytes being transferred. arielMIS is pleased to offer firewall service that can work at increasingly fast Internet speeds of 100, 200, 300GB and faster.
- Zero-Day Detection. Firewalls and supporting services analyze network traffic and behavior to detect previously unknown attacks. Use the power of the Cloud to augment your firewall service through solutions like Fortinet Sandbox Cloud, now offered by arielMIS.
Email Encryption
Phishing and infections via email are still two of the mostly highly used attack vectors because the weak point is manipulating human behavior. Small businesses are at risk when employees use email to transfer sensitive or confidential data including personnel files, intellectual property, and credit card numbers. Many of the top summer attacks were data breaches, where hackers accessed personal and financial data to either harm the company or its customers.
arielMIS offers Mail Protection, which is an easy-to-use mail encryption solution. If your employees need to send sensitive data, they put the subject line in brackets “[..]” and Mail Protection automatically encrypts the email message. This protects the data from being intercepted during its journey along the network and protects your business from liability that occurs with loss of that data.
Enjoy Your Summer, We’ve Got Your Back!
With arielMIS’s security services, you can still enjoy a relaxing summer vacation. We offer data security services, systems monitoring, email, disaster recovery management, patch management, and even cybersecurity training for your employees. Give us a call to learn more about our businessCARE™ Managed Services!
arielMIS is a Managed Service Provider (MSP) providing businessCARE™ IT services designed to keep you and your employees productive and safe. Contact Us if you're interested in learning more about our services.