Business security isn’t just about making sure the smoke detector has a fresh battery, the door is locked at night and the security alarm is set. It’s also important to protect your intellectual property and financial records from theft, either by hackers or by employees. Understandably, managing your network security to guard against information security threats is a critically important measure in protecting your business.
One network security company, Imperva, has released its list of top network security threats for this year. See which ones you expected and which ones are surprises.
Nation-sponsored piracy – Instead of a boatload of armed seamen, this type of attack targets your computer network for either financial gain or simply to disrupt business to cause economic unrest.
Employee data theft – It is more important than ever to ensure that employees are restricted to areas of the computer network that are vital for their job. Leaving all your drives available for a curious staff member is not only unwise; it could be a violation of privacy laws. It takes just one disgruntled employee to create havoc by taking financial information or proprietary work and intellectual property with them when they leave, so consider how you administer your network authorizations.
Social networks – The rapid growth of social networks, both for entertainment and business purposes, have created numerous potential security vulnerabilities for employers. In many cases, it’s not a simple matter of banning the sites, since some entrepreneurs actually use social networks to reach out to their customer base. But while social network organizations are looking to enhance protections and provide better malware detection, you cannot count on anyone but yourself to monitor your information security threats.
These are three major threats to consider, but there are many, many others that may apply to you. Whether you utilize cloud based storage, whether you transact sales through your web site and whether you store credit card information are all factors in how you address your information security threats.
It’s important to know your limitations as it pertains to your computer systems. Unless you’re incredibly multi-talented, it’s difficult to run a business and be a network security expert, so you may want to consider the services of an expert (or a group of experts) to help identify where you have weaknesses and how to best mitigate your information security threats.
Your critical data – and that of your customers – is too valuable to risk. Losing customer data, particularly financial information, would not be a major distraction and financial liability, it could cause great harm to your reputation that could be even more difficult to repair.