Why Are Security Audits Important?

 

Cybersecurity is something that organizations cannot be complacent about. Apart from installing the most recent cybersecurity tools, you have to perform a security audit to make sure that you set up an effective defensive strategy successfully.

What are Security Audits?

Audits are important to ensure and maintain the quality as well as integrity of the system. These checks assist in determining security gaps and offer assurance to the business stakeholders that your company is doing all that it can to protect the data.

A security audit is comprised of three phases – assessment, assignment, and audit. You must have a methodical auditing approach so you don’t miss crucial details. It’s also important to treat every state with the same level of important to make sure that you get comprehensive and thorough outcomes.

During the assessment stage, ask the IT services provider you hired to check your security system. All of your business servers and computers, program, and user must be checked. The assessment must provide you with an overview of your current business security and identify the weak points that need to be fixed immediately.

Once the assessment is done, you have to set in place the necessary solutions and work with the right IT Services Wilmington NC providers. Ask your provider about the IT solutions they could offer for every gap in your system or network. And for problems that they couldn’t handle, you should ask your IT provider for the list of partners they recommend.

Lastly, you have to finish the security audit cycle with an audit, which is a final look around before you release the system. Be sure that the installations, patches, as well as upgrades are correctly integrated and working seamlessly. You should take down notes so you have a reference in the future in case you need details about the hardware and software improvements that are carried out during the audit cycle.

What needs to be audited?

When an audit is performed, there are three things that needs to be checked. The first one is the state of your cybersecurity. Keep in mind that criminals are doing all they can and making new malware attacks to gain access to company networks. You need to know who safe and protected your network is.

The second one is the changes made. You must have a continuity plan if you wish to have a long term data integrity. This can be done by knowing the kind of software and hardware that comprise your system and all the improvements and updates made on them.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now if you’re looking for the help of IT experts in creating a security strategy for your business. Call us now to see how our managed IT solutions can help your company.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

 

Update To Popular Android App Included Malware Infection

Do you use the popular Android app, "Barcode Scanner?" If so, you're certainly not alone. The app has racked up more than 10 million downloads on Google's Play Store and is one of the most popular apps in its class.

It's a simple, straightforward bit of code that does exactly what it sounds like it does, which is why so many people have come to rely on it over the years.

Unfortunately, Google recently pulled the plug, removing the app from the store after it had been there for years. The reason? Sometime during December 2020, an update to the code saw the injection of malware.

Many users give the apps they use regularly a fairly free hand when it comes to downloading and installing updates. In this case, if you let your Barcode Scanner auto-update, the update installed a nasty Trojan on your smartphone that allows hackers complete control over the device. Not good.

Among other things being reported by users who have been impacted by the update are:

• Default browser changing
• New default browser opening with no user intervention and surfing to different, usually ad-intensive pages.
• And displaying ads touting the supposed benefits of other apps that are thought to contain malware.

As bad as those things are, they're not as bad as they could be. Had the malware's owners wished, they could have done significantly more damage than that.

Even so, the app has rightly been pulled from the Play Store and if you have it installed on your phone but haven't allowed it an update in a while, your best bet is to uninstall it and find an alternative that's not brimming with malicious code. Kudos to Google for taking swift action, even if it meant the sudden end of an app with a multi-year history as a safe, reliable product.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and if you are looking to outsource IT support Wilmington NC to keep your company safe from malware and other cybersecurity threats.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

How Advanced Threat Protection Can Help Protect Financial Data

 

You are invited to join us for an informational session of technical discussions and demonstrations on Thursday February 18th, 2021.During this virtual event, we will be hosting three 60 min sessions on SD-WAN, FortiNAC and FortiEDR.

This exciting half-day event will be packed with technical discussion, live demonstrations, and customer use cases.

To register, click on Register Now.

Technology integration in the financial services industry has opened opportunities that could only be dreamed of a few decades back. Around the turn of the millennium, we began seeing banks set up websites for internet-based banking, and about a decade later, mobile banking customers began tapping their smartphones to make payments at retail stores.

Inside the walls of financial institutions themselves, employees are leveraging technology such as email and mobile devices to streamline processes and provide a better overall customer experience.

Industry research indicates that this technological evolution, and its related spend, is just hitting its stride: IDC expects IT spending to grow from its current total of nearly $2.4 trillion to more than $2.7 trillion in 2020, led by financial services. Stephen Minton, vice president of Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC, says, "While the consumer and public sectors have dragged on overall IT spending so far in 2016, we see stronger momentum in other key industries including financial services and manufacturing.”

While this growth in technology has enriched the industry, it’s also introduced data risks that many financial organizations are simply not prepared to defend. Since technology is now a part of the financial services industry’s DNA, the threats to its data are larger than ever. With this in mind, financial organizations should look to advanced threat protection (ATP) solutions as a way to keep their data safe.

Here’s how they work:

Prevent

One of the best ways to defend against malware and other prominent threats in the financial services industry is to limit the surface area while controlling access to valuable data up front. Organizations should only grant access to those that truly need it, and be sure to validate any and all devices that are granted network access. Next, advanced threat protection frameworks utilize technologies like anti-phishing, antivirus, and application control to prevent breaches. Antivirus solutions may be the most critical to ATP as it’s common to all components of the framework.

Powerful ATP solutions also feature signature detection technology that can identify mutated variants of traditional signatures to better detect malware. With this capability, they’re able to catch thousands of new variants and stop them in their tracks in real time, whether the threat originates via email, file transfer, or web browsing.

Detect

Gone are the days of predictable attack methods. The cyber criminals targeting the financial services industry today are smart, and they’re finding new and unique ways to get into the financial services network. For this reason, organizations need to have a framework in place that can detect brand new threats and add them to the shared intelligence database.

ATP frameworks typically utilize sandboxing as a way to test unknown items in a secured environment and analyze how they behave. Thanks to this method, IT Services Wilmington NC teams are able to turn previously unknown items into known threats before they become an issue. If an item is deemed to be malicious it is passed along to other parts of the ATP framework, and the resulting threat intelligence is passed along to other products.

Mitigate

After a threat has been identified, it’s important for it to be immediately mitigated. Advanced threat protection solutions can automatically handle threats by sharing intelligence between prevention and detection products. They can also be handled via “assisted mitigation,” which is a combination of technology and people working together as a cohesive unit.

Once malware has been detected, a three-step process comes into play to successfully mitigate:

• Containment: Today’s network “perimeter” is very hard to define because of the cloud and IoT. With an ATP framework, organizations can segment networks based on criteria like user identity, device type, and location. With this strategy, the movement of an attack is limited and the likelihood of it impacting other parts of the network is greatly reduced.
• Analysis: When a breach occurs, the malware needs to be analyzed and added to all systems so it becomes a known entity.
• Memory: After the malware has been added to the systems, it’s then stored and fed back to all other products as a critical update.

Final Thoughts

As cyber criminals continue to identify new attack methods, security solutions will need to adapt accordingly. While this cycle will likely continue for the foreseeable future, ATP solutions can help IT Support Wilmington NC teams come out on top and keep their critical financial data secure.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now to find out more about our managed IT Services Wilmington NC and how we can help protect your business against cybercriminals. 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

Identity Thefts Had Huge Surge in 2020

 

Trends come and go in the hacking and cybersecurity world. A few years ago, stealing credit card numbers was the crime of choice for most of the hackers out there. They've since begin to gravitate toward health related information. The two big trends in 2020 were the rampant increase in ransomware attacks against companies of all shapes and sizes and the preference of hackers to focus on identity theft.

Both of these crimes saw huge increases last year, but the number of identities stolen last year reached a mind-boggling record of 1.4 million in 2020, which is more than double the number reported in 2019. While there are a number of different factors that have fed into this trend, the biggest and most influential one seems to be the ongoing pandemic, which has created a whole raft of opportunities for hackers to exploit.

The government's Paycheck Protection Program has created a confusing maze that can be hard for some out of work people to navigate. The hackers and scammers of the world are only too happy to insert themselves in the process, offering assistance as a ruse to gain personal information.

In a similar vein, with tens of millions of people out of work and state unemployment systems struggling under the strain, there have been delays in getting benefits that sometimes span months. Again, this raises legitimate questions which hackers and scammers are only to happy to pretend to answer. They use social engineering techniques and pretend to offer assistance in getting needed benefits more quickly, only to steal the target's identity.

Given this, the IRS has recommended that all taxpayers at least consider taking the time to establish an Identity Protection PIN when filing their taxes this year. This is essentially a form of two factor authentication that will help ensure that if you're due a refund from the IRS, someone who has stolen your identity won't file taxes on your behalf and steal it from you.

It's sound advice but sadly, this won't be the last threat we'll need to be mindful of in the months ahead. Stay vigilant out there. Work with professionals offering IT Services Wilmington NC.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT experts help protect your company and your clients from identity theft and other online threats. 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

The Importance of General Software Patches and Updates

 

You’re most likely familiar with those small pop up windows. They let you know that there are available software updates for your mobile device, tablet, laptop, and computer. You may be tempted to just click on the button that says remind me later. But you must not do that. Or at least don’t delay the update for too long if you want to ensure computer security.

Software updates are crucial to your cybersecurity and digital safety. The sooner you do the update, then the sooner you will feel assured and confident that the device involved is secure until a new update comes.

Do you have any idea why these updates are so important? There are many reasons why and they are listed below.

They do a lot of things.

There are many benefits offered by software updates and they are all about the revisions. These may include fixing security holes that may have been discovered and repairing or getting rid of computer bugs. Updates could add brand new features to your device and get rid of outdated ones. If you don’t have an in house IT team or you prefer outsourcing, you can hire IT Services Wilmington NC.

It helps patch security flaws.

Hackers like security flaws or software vulnerabilities. These are security weaknesses or holes that are found in an operating system or software program. Hackers can make full use of the weakness by creating code that will target the vulnerability. The code will then be packed into a malware, which is also referred to as a malicious software.

An exploit may infect your device without doing anything on your part aside from checking out a rouge website, playing an infected media, or opening a message that has been compromised.

What will happen next?  The malware will steal the data on the device and the attacker will be allowed to get control of your computer and then encrypt your files. The software update will include the patches for the software. They will cover the security holes to make sure that hackers are kept out all the time.

Protect Your Data

You most likely have a lot of documents as well as personal information on all of your devices. Your PII or personally identifiable information from the email to the bank account is important for the cybercriminals.

They could use it to do crimes using your name or to sell them to the dark web to allow others to make crimes. In case it is a ransomware attack, they may encrypt your data. You may have to pay the ransom to get an encryption key if you want take back control of your device. Or worse, you may pay a ransom but still not get back control of your device. You have to update the operating system and the software if you want to keep hackers out of your system.

It is not just about you.

IT Support Wilmington NC may focus on you but you have to think about other people too. If your device gets infected with a virus, you may pass it on to your business associates, family, or friends. That is why you would like to keep your systems and software updated. You should use a trusted antivirus program to keep your computer and other devices safe and secure. However, you need to know that having an antivirus protection is not enough.

You deserve the best.

Updates will patch the security holes and they could also improve existing ones and add new features. You don’t want to keep yourself from using the latest and the best right? So, updates are about you. Your program will have a chance at becoming more stable and avoid crashing. An update may also boost the program performance and improve the speed because you deserve all of these things.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT experts help make sure that your apps, software, and operating systems are always updated to keep cybercriminals at bay.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

The Difference Between Proactive And Reactive Cybersecurity

 

Most companies don’t make enough preparations against incidents until it is too late. Do not wait for a data breach to happen before your company takes action. Here are some tips that your team must do to come up with a cybersecurity approach that is proactive.

Why your business needs a proactive cybersecurity strategy?

A proactive cybersecurity strategy includes adding processes that will identify threats before they happen and pre-emptively identifying security weaknesses. Meanwhile a reactive approach includes responding to events such as data breaches and hacks after they happen.

Tasks involved in a reactive cybersecurity such as log monitoring, SIEM, and patch management are mainly focused on fixing immediate problems and incidents and stopping repeat attacks or technological disruptions from taking place later on. However, a proactive approach uses tasks that let your company to determine and prevent incidents from becoming a threat.

Why it’s better to have a proactive approach?

There many benefits to using proactive cybersecurity approaches. Cyberthreats are becoming more complex and smarter than ever, you have to be ahead of all these before they can cause damage to your company.

A proactive method will help define a baseline level of digital security that consist of the needed starting point wherein software, processes, as well as professionals are required to protect your company. When that is established, the reporting of possible threats as well as responding to incidents could be automated so that your IT support team would be notified right away and take the needed action in real time.

Aside from that, not boosting your technology defenses as the value of digital information and value of data to grow would cost you a lot.

How to establish a proactive cybersecurity defense?

Moving from a reactive to a proactive cybersecurity strategy will involve the gradual improvement of your existing strategy. Make sure that these important features are included in the managed IT services Wilmington NC.

Disk protection/encryption – encrypting hard drives will promote data security in case that you lose physical devices, or if they are misplaced or stolen.

Security awareness training – training internal employees will help keep your staff updated about the latest cybersecurity practices and what security threats they need to avoid.

Multifactor authentication – granting and identifying access only to your preferred group or individuals will help set in place data security, proper access control can be ensured with a multi step authentication.

Cybersecurity risk assessment – in the contemporary technology environment, companies must have an indepth plan for the management of all cybersecurity risks.

Vulnerability scanning – could help automate the tasks of checking and determining weaknesses and opening in your current cybersecurity defenses before a data breach happens.

Managed security operations center – with an IT servicesWilmington NC, you will have a soc or managed security operations center wherein a team of IT experts takes care of the essential monitoring and incident response tasks.

SpartanTec, Inc. provides quality IT support Wilmington NC to monitor and protect your company from cyberthreats.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

How Does Ransomware Get Into Your Computer?

 

Today’s digital landscape is filled with various hazards such as identity theft, spyware, and viruses. There’s one particular threat that has become a virulent and common threat on the internet these days. It’s called ransomware. It is a software-based computer security threat that’s already wreak havoc on various industries. It has cost companies billions of dollars every year and that’s why IT services Wilmington NC is crucial.

What is ransomware?

The very first ransomware attack was reported back in 1989 through the AIDS Trojan horse. It was only in the early 2000s when the public knew about this threat. Since 2005, ransomware has evolved at a very alarming rate.

Ransomware is pretty simple. Rather than a virus that immediately replicates itself throughout the whole system, the modern day ransomware will attack by locking out the users from the system using a highly advanced encryption.

When it’s in place, the hackers will ask for a ransom if you want to regain control of your system. In some instances, access won’t be restored even if you paid the ransom and followed their demands. Ransomware is illegal and it is considered as digital extortion. Hackers who get caught will face serious consequences. Unfortunately, a lot of them are never tracked and arrested and that’s why you need to bolster your cybersecurity.

How does ransomware control your system?

Modern networks and computers are susceptible to this type of cyberattack. There are several methods for ransomware to control of your system, according to the experts in IT support Wilmington NC.

Suspicious email attachments

You must always be careful when it comes to opening attachments from your email even if you think that it’s from a reliable source. The computer of the original sender may be infected without them knowing. It makes them an effective host for the code of the ransomware.

Additionally, attachments that came from an unknown or suspicious email address must be ignored and deleted right away from your inbox.

Fraudulent websites

Hackers may also use websites to spread ransomware to networks and computers. If you want to protect yourself, you need to make sure that you download and install files that are from a secure and trusted website. In many instances, you must see https instead of http on the url address.

Fake software

Sneaky hackers are popular for creating fake apps that are just coverups for ransomware. Taking the needed precaution and downloading from apps or software from reliable and trustworthy sources is crucial if you want to avoid fraudulent and fake software.

User Installation

In some instances, when a disgruntled employee still has access to the network of your company, the employee could intentionally install the ransomware. The worker doesn’t have to make the ransomware. They just have to download and install the infected file and this will lock the whole network.

There are steps you can take to avoid the risks of your network getting infected with a ransomware. You must install a malware removal and antivirus system. You should also set up regular and automatic updates to your operating system. Reduce your risks by enlisting the help of an IT expert that offers managed IT services Wilmington NC.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT experts assist you in protecting your company and network against ransomware and other types of cyberattacks.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence