More and more companies are facing the impossible challenges of keeping up with viruses and malware or suffering the consequences of legal action. Whether its negligence or malicious intent, the end result can be the same if you are not prepared.
With so many open connections to the outside world and more and more companies not even knowing what applications are running on their networks, its hard to understand how anything can be kept safe at all. That is why a layered approach is the best practice. When one method fails or has not updated its virus definitions, another can hopefully catch the virus and remove it before impacting your data. Things like ransomware have drawn a sharp eye on the world of hackers and the larger underlying organizations that ultimately may end in organized crime. Trojans such as CryptoWall have been around for a few years and changed to become quite difficult and damaging to corporate networks. After infecting a computer they go on to encrypt and/or corrupt all files on any accessible network drives and then force a user to pay a fee to get their data back. The big unknown here is whether or not that data was leaked or sent elsewhere at the time of infection or whether paying for the software to decrypt the files will only make you a future target or open the door for more breaches.
There is, however, hope if you proactively manage and maintain your network security:
- Do, layer security systems at multiple levels such as switches, firewalls, email servers, desktops, and servers. The more layers you have, the more chance of detecting the threats.
- Do, have patches and engines updated as frequently as possible.
- Don’t, assume one person or system can do it all – let a professional or team of professional assess your network and give you guarantees.
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, ENSURE YOUR
BACKUP STRATEGY IS SUPERIOR
Trying to stay one step ahead of threats is a daunting task and even the best system in the world are not exempt from compromise. When disaster does strike, ensure you have a tried and proven backup and recovery plan in place that can easily turn a disaster into a few hours of downtime. Consider how often you need to backup and how far back your will need to keep these backups in order to be fully protected. Knowing you can survive a catastrophic breach or destruction of your data via a good backup strategy is not only peace of mind, it’s good business continuity.
