5 common cybersecurity myths busted

As cyber threats grow more in complexity and number each day, protecting your business data is more important than ever.

In the first six months of 2019, more than 4 billion records were exposed by data breaches (RiskBased, 2019). Those breaches didn’t all occur during business hours, when your IT staff is plugged in and prepared to face bad actors. Instead, those attacks happened at night, on the weekend, on a holiday, or during normal business hours but went undetected.

The best way to stay out of the headlines for a cybersecurity issue is to be proactive. Use multifactor authentication to secure your accounts, make sure your computer and software is up-to-date with patches, don’t click links or visit webpages that are not from trusted sources.

Taking the simple steps can keep your data in-house and save your business from expensive and embarrassing data breaches.

Everyone has too many accounts and passwords to keep up with, so using a variation of the same password is ok, right?

Wrong.

While reusing the same password is easy for us to keep up with and helps us move through our day faster, it’s also much easier for a hacker to infiltrate and then use to get into other accounts. Using a password management tool can help keep your passwords safe, create strong passwords, and enter your credentials automatically for accounts.  

Businesses, colleges, and cities were hit hard by ransomware in 2018 and 2019, garnering a lot of attention to the action. In 2020, ransomware is still a huge piece of the cybercrime market, accounting for 51 percent of all attacks, with businesses paying ransom a whopping 95 percent of the time.

In 2020, some of the ransomware attacks have resulted in over $150 million spent in rebuilding networks, paying hackers, and creating preventative measures against future attacks.

So, what does it take to combat ransomware?

Using antivirus software, strong and frequent backups, and firewalls can help keep ransomware at bay or allow your organization to move on by restoring your own data. Paying a ransom shows the cybercriminal that their actions can reap rewards from your organization.

The IT staff your company employs is more than likely stretched too thin, dealing with requests for service, break fixes, password resets, patches, software updates, getting equipment set up for a new hire, offboarding an employee who has left the company, provisioning accounts, fixing the phone line in the conference room, investigating why the WiFi is down in one part of the office, and trying to stop cybercriminals from stealing your business data.

Even the best IT staff could use a little bit of assistance in some areas.

That’s where partners with expert skillsets can provide a helping hand. Outsourcing some of your IT needs is a worthwhile investment that allows your organization to benefit from the expertise of a group of specialists. Managing cybersecurity technologies, controlling your IAM, or backing up your business data can be done effectively by a partner organization, taking some of the day-to-day strain off your IT team.

Ideally, everyone would take cybersecurity training and the policies instituted by your management team to heart and follow them to the letter of the law. Oftentimes, that doesn’t happen, so no matter how much training or how bulletproof your policies are, issues will still arise.

After all, 1 in 4 data breaches happens because of human error (threatpost, 2019).

While human error accounts for many data breaches, the malicious intent comes from the cybercriminals who enact the attacks by sending a phishing email, credential-stuff your accounts using bought or stolen data, or simply brute force attack your network that isn’t password protected.

Data breaches happen for a number of reasons and it takes plenty of precautions and planning to stay ahead of cybercriminals.