Insights

Part 2 of 5: 

Part 1 of 5:  In today's digital era, small businesses face increasing cyber threats that can lead to financial loss, data breaches, and reputational damage. Cyber insurance is a critical safeguard.

The recent cyberattacks on Colonial Pipeline and JBS underscore just how debilitating it can be for the U.S. economy when major supply chains shut down. If energy and food resources can’t get distributed to retailers, a state of panic can ensue as consumers hoard as much of the products in short supply as they can.

You may have heard the term Multi-Factor authentication (or MFA).  Even if you haven’t, it’s likely that you are using it today with one or more of your online accounts.  When your online banking and credit card applications require you to receive a one-time authorization code via text message and then plug it into the app after you log in – that’s one type of multi-factor authentication (MFA). When your online app asks your phone app to authenticate you, via thumbprint or a “is this you” prompt, that’s MFA.  And while Multi-Factor authentication is a minor interruption for the user, it allows your financial institutions to make sure it’s really you logging on—giving you peace of mind that a cybercriminal who might have gotten your login credentials can’t get in and take your money.

There is no magic bullet when it comes to IT. But the right technology partner can take your company out of a defensive, reactive mode…and put you on the offensive where you take a proactive stance. Instead of IT being a liability that hinders your business, IT becomes an asset that drives your business—by increasing your capacity to generate revenue and enabling your business workflows to operate more efficiently.

Your customer relationships come down to trust. Whether or not you deliver on what you promise and provide quality products and services is certainly top-of-mind. But what’s also a concern is how securely you handle their personal information—especially their credit card data.

According to the Ponemon Institute, 72% of cyberattacks target small- to medium-sized businesses. With the bad guys now focusing on the SMB sector, hardening security is critical, especially for firms developing and deploying SaaS applications for the healthcare industry in the cloud.

In military theory, warfare divides into three levels. The first is tactics, the second is operations, and the third is strategy. Each of these levels provides several aspects into the art of war, making you much more versatile as a practitioner. When it comes to cyber security, there is no difference. When trying to learn hacking, it is easy to focus on the commands, tools, and techniques to hack your target. However, this can deviate you from the bigger picture of why you are hacking in the first place.  

Just as virtualization has proven beneficial for server infrastructures, the same is true for firewalls.  Virtual firewalls provide the same functions as physical firewalls along with additional benefits. For example, virtual firewalls lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your implementations because more than one instance can be deployed on a single physical appliance.