5 Compelling Reasons For Small Businesses Cybersecurity Program

 There are several compelling reasons why small businesses should prioritize cybersecurity:

1. Protecting customer data: Small businesses often handle sensitive information such as customer names, addresses, payment information, and other personally identifiable information. Implementing cybersecurity measures helps to protect this information from cyber threats such as data breaches, hacking attempts, and other malicious activities.
2. Avoiding financial losses: Cybersecurity breaches can be costly for small businesses. In fact, according to a study by IBM, the average cost of a data breach for a small business is $2.5 million. This includes costs such as legal fees, compensation for affected customers, and damage to the company's reputation. Implementing cybersecurity measures can help to reduce the risk of these financial losses.
3. Compliance with regulations: Many industries have regulations in place that require businesses to implement cybersecurity measures to protect customer data. Failing to comply with these regulations can result in legal and financial penalties.
4. Maintaining business continuity: Cybersecurity breaches can disrupt a small business's operations, leading to downtime, loss of productivity, and potentially even business closure. Implementing cybersecurity measures helps to minimize these risks and ensure business continuity.
5. Protecting intellectual property: Small businesses often rely on intellectual property such as trade secrets, patents, and copyrights to maintain a competitive advantage. Cybersecurity breaches can compromise this information and put the business at a disadvantage. Implementing cybersecurity measures helps to protect intellectual property and preserve the business's competitive edge.

Overall, small businesses stand to gain a lot by implementing cybersecurity measures. By prioritizing cybersecurity, they can protect customer data, avoid financial losses, comply with regulations, maintain business continuity, and protect intellectual property.

Two Weeks of Cyber Hell

TRUE STORY:

I had a fringe customer who would call us when they needed something to their network.  They had roughly a Hundred Employees.  The internal IT department consisted of the office manager.  They used outdated unsupported operating systems and all day to day operations were performed by the office manager.

A hacker who phished their way to a Unsupported Windows 7 device, got hold of the machine, reversed engineered himself to SUPER USER status on the server, and went through the server and spent the time to figure out how the company was run.  About 2 weeks later on a Saturday night, they encrypted their entire network Computers, Servers everything.  Deleted all the backups and canceled the offsite backup.

They wanted $250,000 to get their data back and unencrypt all their data.

Luckily I was able to recover the data from the offsite backup and rebuild all of their computers.

The Moral of the story is , do not rely on untrained personnel and keep your tech updated to the newest revisions.

 

Let Johnny Use Your Work Laptop

Let Johnny Use Your Work Laptop

So your son and daughter used your work computer last night, now your companies server has ransomware.  There is not much to prevent this, have you educated your staff, created an Acceptable Use Policy which states that this may be cause for termination.

21 Cybersecurity Best Practices for Your Hybrid Workforce

 

CONTACT US TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EACH OF THESE SECURITY BEST PRACTICES
AND MORE FOR HYBRID WORK ENVIRONMENTS.

2 Evergreen Lane

Suite 11

Hopedale, MA 01747

(508)381-8307

AvantiNetworks.com

Bitdefender Antivirus DO NOT USE IT..... if you like viruses

 Bitdefender voted best Antivirus/Cybersecurity protection for business.

See full article: https://avantinetworks.com/?p=2305

Your biggest threat to your company is your employee

Your biggest threat to your company is your employee...  seen it first hand 1/2 dozen times accountants stealing, couple of dozen times employees feeling they are not paid enough creating fraud and Identity theft.  

OR

Most likely situation that will occur, your employee clicking on the wrong email causing ransomware, Identity Theft, or viruses.  You should be considering the following;

• Employees
• Training
• Restricting Access
• Passwords
• Outsourced Personnel

There are solutions, contact us at https://avantinetworks.com/contact-us/  for a free no pressure (I Promise) 1 hour no obligation consultation.  Call now.

Checkout the video

#Cybersecurity #Employees #ransomware #training #passwords #hacking #stealing

Who is listening to my conversations?

 

Who is listening to my conversations?

Just yesterday someone mentioned to me Beef Wellington, I said what is Beef Wellington to my friend.  The next day the first You Tube video was "How to make beef wellington", this is not a coincidence. 

At a customer we were looking at a product called "Exclaimer"  for the last 6 weeks all I see  on You Tube are "Exclaimer" ads.  

One thing we can easily do is to browse in incognito mode, DO NOT Sync you data with Google or any other company.  Try not to accept cookies, and do a daily cleaning of your machine.  Learn More Solutions.

#alexa #cybercrime #google #youtube #snooping #privacy

FTC warns companies to remediate Log4j security vulnerability - OR ELSE

Hello all the Log4j Vulnerability is rampant and the government is stepping in see below all of the details.

Currently, 2 products I use Rocket Cyber and Huntress have been able to detect this vulnerability easily and we have taken action to resolve the issue for our Security Managed Companies.  So if you use JAVA you should look into this vulnerability.

If you are unsure an need help please contact us at Avanti Networks

FTC NOTICE:

Log4j is a ubiquitous piece of software used to record activities in a wide range of systems found in consumer-facing products and services. Recently, a serious vulnerability in the popular Java logging package, Log4j (CVE-2021-44228) was disclosed, posing a severe risk to millions of consumer products to enterprise software and web applications. This vulnerability is being widely exploited by a growing set of attackers.

When vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited, it risks a loss or breach of personal information, financial loss, and other irreversible harms. The duty to take reasonable steps to mitigate known software vulnerabilities implicates laws including, among others, the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Gramm Leach Bliley Act. It is critical that companies and their vendors relying on Log4j act now, in order to reduce the likelihood of harm to consumers, and to avoid FTC legal action. According to the complaint in Equifax, a failure to patch a known vulnerability irreversibly exposed the personal information of 147 million consumers. Equifax agreed to pay $700 million to settle actions by the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and all fifty states. The FTC intends to use its full legal authority to pursue companies that fail to take reasonable steps to protect consumer data from exposure as a result of Log4j, or similar known vulnerabilities in the future. 

Check if you use the Log4j software library by consulting the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) guidance: https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/apache-log4j-vulnerability-guidance. If you do use it:

• Update your Log4j software package to the most current version found here: https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html(link is external)  
• Consult CISA guidance to mitigate this vulnerability.   
• Ensure remedial steps are taken to ensure that your company’s practices do not violate the law. Failure to identify and patch instances of this software may violate the FTC Act. 
• Distribute this information to any relevant third-party subsidiaries that sell products or services to consumers who may be vulnerable. 

The Log4j vulnerability is part of a broader set of structural issues. It is one of thousands of unheralded but critically important open-source services that are used across a near-innumerable variety of internet companies. These projects are often created and maintained by volunteers, who don’t always have adequate resources and personnel for incident response and proactive maintenance even as their projects are critical to the internet economy.[1] This overall dynamic is something the FTC will consider as we work to address the root issues that endanger user security.