WHY DOES A COMPANY NEED
COMPUTER SECURITY?
If
a company asks this question it is highly possible that it is already being
attacked, security in companies at the level of computer and technological
assets is not a game that we must leave time. If we consider which the
most valuable asset of any company is, we can say that it is without doubt:
"The information
it handles ..."
So
several questions arise to ask ourselves:
1.
Are
we completely sure who accesses what information within my company and can I
give testimonies to my clients that their information is not seen by people or
employees who should not have access to it?
2.
Are
the procedures clear enough that define where confidential information is
stored and how it could be accessed by third parties?
3.
Do
I have a trained technical staff (consultative or permanent) who has mastered
computer security issues and who supports me in the most relevant aspects of
how to keep information safe?
4.
Are
my company's operations secured by resilient processes?
5.
Is
anyone responsible for the data and how is it handled within my company?
6.
In
the event of a data leak, do I have alternate mechanisms that would protect
data from being read by unauthorized third parties?
7.
Are
all my employees trained in basic security and how to treat data due to its
level of confidentiality?
If
you have answered "Yes" to all these questions, we congratulate you,
you are part of a company with a very clear vision of how to manage your IT
security. But if on the contrary you have answered "No" to at
least one of these questions, do not be alarmed, you are in the right place to
know what to do, and take immediate action.
What are hackers
looking for when attacking our company?
There
is only such a valuable asset within a company for any hacker who decides to
tie us up as the information we handle about our clients, our operations or the
brand as such. Computers can be reset to their default state after an
attack, employees can continue working in another location or on other
computers after an attack, and even operating machinery can be restarted to
continue working normally after an attack; But the only thing that is
completely lost is the credibility of a company when information on products or
services, client folders, business strategies, confidential files are
completely erased or encrypted by a hacker after an attack and even worse if
they are published in the internet by way of informational leak .
Attacks
can be more powerful for several of the following reasons:
1.
Deleted
or encrypted information is irrecoverable unless a ransom is paid or is backed
up, this could imply the total loss of information for the business, and
therefore a collapse of the credibility of the same, cases such as that of Facebook
in In 2018 , Uber in 2016, or iCloud photo leaks in
2014 , these may not be the most recent cases of leakage, but they are
cases of companies that you would think are not going to have the luxury of
being vulnerable. However, the reality is that there is no such thing as a
non-vulnerable company.
2.
When
there is no contingency or resilience plan that supports this situation: In
security, it is customary to say that nothing is secure enough so that it is
not compromised, therefore, in computer security there are two branches that
contribute after an attack: forensic part of an episode and the resilience that
is how we react to that episode. It is of high importance to be prepared
and never consider anything like a "RMS Titanic" of safety,
since as experience gives us even the most resistant ship in the world was sent
to the bottom of the sea by a piece of ice.
3.
For
not contacting an adequate technical staff that idealizes the protection of
data and technologies, or simply having a technical staff that is not prepared
for these situations. Information gaps are the most macabre type of
situations in which any company could be involved. How these issues are
handled is crucial to the future sustainability of the company's reputation.
4.
Operative
or administrative personnel poorly trained in how to react to an IT breach
could be a catastrophe for the company, since as we could observe in recent
events in the country about fires and explosions in
companies, the way in which employees handled the information and It was
processed abroad through social networks, negatively affecting the companies
affected in these incidents. Therefore, there must be a clear evacuation
plan, protection of human life, safeguarding of information and continuity of
well-documented company assets and that staff receive constant training on
these documents.
What steps should I
take?
Let's
start from the basics to the advanced:
1.
Get
a Total
Security antivirus or its equivalent for the whole company, you will be
surprised that many companies rely on free antivirus to protect their company. Without
knowing that free antivirus are marketed by antivirus companies for the sole
purpose of obtaining statistics and intelligence with as many users as
possible, at no time do free antivirus offer the protection of their paid
counterpart. Therefore, if you do not have a Total Security antivirus, get
one right now. Some recommendations Bitdefender Total Security, Kaspersky
Total Security, Avast Total Care.
2.
Now
you can take a break knowing that all your machines have at least one antivirus installed. Well,
not really, for an antivirus to be completely effective it must be monitored by
an expert who identifies the threats that have entered and criticizes them,
classifies them and can give advice to users on how to avoid getting infected. This
is very simple, there is what Zero Day Exploit threats are These
threats have a common objective to detect vulnerabilities in systems that have
arisen before the manufacturer could have time to apply a patch or solution to
it, in the time elapsed between the developer being able to write the necessary
code to resolve that vulnerability and the distribution to all users, hackers
take advantage of this vulnerability; in this period we are all
vulnerable, even we have an antivirus. For this
and many other reasons, it is important to have an expert staff that can
support us by identifying and trying to solve these vulnerabilities. It is
important to note that, depending on the situation of your company and the
evaluation carried out by the security expert, you may require additional
protection devices and solutions such with firewalls,VPN , among others.
3.
Excellent,
now we already have antivirus
and an expert (consultant or permanent) who supports us with all security
issues, we already believe that we can rest a little and forget about the
security issue. Of course not, impossible. Now is that the work
begins, this expert must make a survey of each of the systems used by the
company, identify the update levels, which risks imply for the operations of
the company a failure in systems that support the operations of the company . At
the same time that an information backup plan is developed in alternate
locations (outside the company or in the cloud), an effective data risk and
resilience plan.
4.
One
of the most important points in the equation and one that has produced
excellent results in practice is training users on how to protect themselves
from intentional hacker attacks. For example:
a.
Identify
identity theft emails.
b.
Safety
when browsing the Internet.
c.
Avoid
downloading personal or unknown files on corporate computers.
d.
Including
creating a communication work plan with customers and suppliers that make it
impossible for another person to impersonate them, or vice versa.
e.
Among
other high impact aspects.
5.
Create
and effectively implement a backup and restore plan for your tested data.
Will
security ever be unnecessary?
As
systems and hardware become more powerful, to the same extent systems become
more vulnerable, the reality is that security is more related to the resources
available to people who want to enter your system or obtain your data, and in a
general sense, accessibility to powerful resources today is very simple and is
at hand for anyone.
Just
10 years ago, thinking about having access to high-performance computers was an
almost absurd idea, today, you can hire it simply with a few clicks on the
Internet at providers that for an extra price hide your identity from you.
So,
to the question of will computer security be unnecessary in a few years? It
is clearly not, since the same people who work actively in the development of
the systems are commonly the ones who share their vulnerabilities and exploit
them. Governments are an active part of the attack gear in the world due
to the well-known digital war , followed by security companies that,
in order to develop more secure platforms, pay hackers to carry out attacks
around the world and report vulnerabilities to them.
