7 Tips To Keep Your Business Safe From Hackers

SEVEN SIMPLE CYBER SECURITY TIPS According to a recent SolarWinds® study, untrained employees are noted as the largest threat at federal agencies (53%). CREATE STRONG PASSWORDS Make your password at least 12 characters long, include numbers, symbols, and capital letters and avoid patterns like "123456" or "qwerty." ***OrD FACT: The most common password is "123456" and can be cracked in less than a second.1 PRACTICE PASSWORD HYGIENE Do not share your password..with anyone! Change it on a regular 90-day basis and, where possible, avoid using the same security questions across multiple sites. FACT: More than 1 billion passwords are already stored in a Russian database.? KEEP YOUR INBOX SAFE Enable email scanning by your anti-virus, don't trust attachments, disable automatic previewing, and never respond to email requests for personal or company account information. FACT: 91% of advanced cyber-attacks begin with email.3 DON'T SHARE IMPORTANT INFO Double-check the "send to" field before sending emails to the wrong person, and if you are a repeat offender-or know of one in the business-deactivate autofill in Microsoft® Outlook®: To: I File-Options-Mail→Send Messages. Cc: FACT: 78% of those surveyed admitted accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient. KEEP SECURITY TOP OF MIND Develop a simple plan for employees to follow if there is a potential security risk identified. It's everyone's responsibility to share potential mistakes openly within the company. By doing so, you will shorten time between a breach and a fix. More importantly, you can proactively plan for problems. FACT: Organizations without security awareness programs report security incident costs to be 4x higher than their peers.5 KEEP YOUR DEVICES SECURE Apply encryption to PCs and USB drives and encourage employees to keep devices with them. Keep patches current by enabling "Auto Update" across Microsoft Windows-based devices and common 3rd-party add-ons such as Acrobat®, Java™M, and Flash®-as these are common malware infection vectors. FACT: According to a recent survey, half of the respondents indicated that data on employee or contractor personal computers and removable storage is most at risk (47%). AUDIT WHO HAS ACCESS Regularly evaluate responsibilities and access to sensitive data. If roles change, ensure only those employees that "need to know" have access by adding credential reviews to your HR process and always verify 3rd-party access and security. FACT: Privilege abuse is cited as the most frequent form of insider misuse (>80% of the 11,000 incidents reported), so monitor and verify privileged use.? http://wpengine.com/unmasked/ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/technology/russian-gang-said-to-amass-more-than-a-billion-stolen-internet-credentials.html?_r=0 Trend Micro research 2012 http://www.howdesign.com/article/emailmistakes/ PWC US State of Cybercrime Survey 2014 http://www.slideshare.net/SolarWinds/solar-winds-it-security-survey-report-2015-final http://www.verizonenterprise.com/DBIR/2014/ www.SOLARWINDS.COM solarwinds