One of the biggest threats to breaches of sensitive data time and time again was rooted in vulnerabilities from printers and copy machines. The problem with these devices is that they are monitored by printing companies that do not have the expertise or training in data and cybersecurity. And another problem is that many managed services providers or IT Support companies fail to assess and secure the entirety of your network—including printers and copiers supported by third party vendors.
Your reality is that all printers need to be routinely checked for security issues
In fact, all copiers, printers and fax machines are required to be secured and maintained according to security standards—especially for businesses with security compliance pressures, such as HIPAA, PCI or NCUA.
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Hands down, relationship-building is a key to success in any organization. And that includes IT Support! If our team isn’t engaging with users, making them feel comfortable with us, don’t you think their experience with technology at work—specifically in ways they can help keep your business’ network secure—suffer?
If they are in fact concerned about your security, most IT Departments and Managed Services Providers stress out over the nuts and bolts—hardware and software—on your networks. Some may send out impersonal emails warning users of the latest attack (if you’re luck!), but without getting to know users and establishing a healthy working relationship with them, your business may be turning your biggest assets (your team members) into your biggest liabilities (phishing victims, password violators, sensitive data leakers) without even realizing it!
First, what do I mean by a strong relationship?
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With all the cyberattacks lately, how can you expect one IT guy to catch up? Cybersecurity threats are growing by the day—a 450 BILLION dollar industry has made it easy to recruit. And many budding criminals are getting on the job training on the most effective attacks.
In fact, there’s little more than ordering a kit nowadays—that include all the steps on how to initiate a successful cyber campaign. That means, criminals don’t have to be the computer wiz to get some really lucrative attacks (attacks that are hitting businesses like yours!).
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Like it or not, if any computer on your network is connected to the internet, your ENTIRE network is vulnerable to cyberattacks.
With the hidden costs of a cyberattack on the rise and with more and more aspiring criminals salivating over the potential to hack into your business network and steal or ransom your data, your organization’s network needs to be more careful (and secure) than ever before. And a part of being secure is having someone on your IT support team that really understands your businesses current security risks and the steps to take to alleviate any time bombs that might trigger a disastrous event down the line. What your IT support critically needs now more than ever before is a cybersecurity expert trained, certified and up-to-speed on latest security vulnerabilities and exploits criminals are using to get into business networks.
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85% of the time I audit a prospective client, I find that they either (1) have no backups or (2) have backups, but when we test them, they fail! If your business doesn’t invest time into backing up your network regularly, you may find any type of disaster—natural or human—will cripple it.
AND even more worrisome: Your Business Likely Has No Plan of Recovery
Your business likely relies heavily on one person that has a great depth of institutional knowledge and have no idea of how they can help. Many businesses continue to run with no recovery plan—plans to get the right materials to rebuild. Here, I’m not talking about bricks and mortar. There’s a lot more to disaster recovery and prevention than rebuilding a store front. When confronted with disaster, if you only have one or a handful of people “in-the-know” and no plan for your entire team, you risk a hard up-hill recovery, if recovery is even possible.
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After almost 20 years of tackling network security—amounting to billions of dollars in investments, it seems like organizations large and small continue to struggle with cybersecurity.
What’s Worrisome: The cybersecurity problem is getting WORSE, not better. Why haven’t we been able to nip cyber threats in the bud?
The answer is much more than a technical one. While technical issues persist to be a big part of why cybercriminals are able to penetrate your business networks (simply no one knows how to write bug-free code), resolutions to technical issues alone will not fix cybersecurity threats for three reasons:
Cybersecurity is not simply a technical problem— while most tech guys would have you believe that cybersecurity is simply based in tech, a good chunk of cybersecurity is intertwined in many aspects of society. Hackers and cybercriminals often play off of human emotion and our natural instincts to distract and deceive our users. This problem can often be seen as a multi-faceted problem that spans disciplines of the likes of economics, psychology, government and computer science (likely many others). While addressing the technical aspects of cyberattacks can effectively eliminate threats from known vulnerabilities on your network, it does not take into account all aspects of social and human awareness that are important to understand the stemming reasons for a need of cybersecurity in the first place.
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