It’s becoming natural to hear about cybersecurity breaches and hacks at large companies. Just recently, Equifax revealed that driver’s license numbers, social security numbers, and other personal data were stolen in their recent breach. While big businesses make the big news, 43% of cybersecurity attacks target small businesses according to a report from Small Business Trends. The number keeps growing every year, which is why a Vulnerability Assessment is important.
Many hackers like going after small businesses because those organizations are surprisingly vulnerable. Restaurants, retail stores, cleaning companies, even home-based businesses keep a large amount of valuable data about their customer’s homes, habits, financial information, and interests as well as the transaction details from the actual sales. The businesses use it for monthly mailers and promotions, while hackers would use it for identity and material theft.
There are a number of ways that attacks to data are made – from simple phishing emails to infiltrating web application flaws. They are taking advantage of automated techniques and a lack of cyber security services to trick a person into allowing malware into your system. Once that’s accomplished, anything from observation and surveillance, data theft, or ransomware could occur.
New threats come up every day, the latest being through the Internet of Things (IoT). All those marvelous gadgets – lights, security cameras, smart phones, even jewelry and your point-of-sale system – are connected to computers and the internet. That means they are also vulnerable to attack. In fact, criminals hijacked hundreds of thousands of Internet of Things (IoT) devices worldwide in 2017.
Most small to mid size businesses don’t have cyber security services on staff. But with all of the threats that loom through the wired and wireless internet, it is even more essential for businesses, both small and large, to make sure that their staff has proper cyber security training. It’s also very important to evaluate the infrastructure and get a vulnerability assessment. Don’t make assumptions that the end service company for an IoT watch or sales system will protect the business. Customers are entrusting you with their data, and if there’s a problem it is you they will blame.
There are several types of Vulnerability Assessments, but in general it is the process of identifying, quantifying, and ranking the vulnerabilities in a network, wireless network, applications, and/or databases in a computer environment.
To truly benefit from an assessment, business owners or key employees need to understand their own business processes. It’s important to pay particular attention to critical processes that are sensitive in terms of compliance, customer privacy, and proprietary or competition desirable data. The vulnerability assessment will look at mission critical and sensitive processes and help identify the applications and data impacted. A good cyber security company will perform the assessment and help the organization create a more secure environment. The benefits are more than just knowing data is safe from intruders. It lets your customers and clients know that you are concerned for their data safety as well.
PamTen’s Cyber Security Services provide organizations of all size comprehensive assessment of an organization’s security risks, determine gaps, develop policies and procedures, engage employees with the training and awareness to minimize security threats, establish governance and tools to continuously protect and monitor critical business data.