Small to medium-sized companies rely more heavily on their computer networks to conduct nearly every aspect of their business, making it more important than ever to make sure that the company’s computer networks are extremely well managed, updated and secure from external threats. Increasingly, companies are entirely dependent on their networks to deliver their products and services. If their networks go down, they are out of business until that network can be restored.
Yet, many small companies are taking risks with their networks and by extension, their entire business, and they often aren’t even aware of it.
1. You Have a Firewall, so Your Network is Protected, Right?
Probably not. The problem is that the firewall is usually not sufficiently configured, managed, monitored and maintained. The reason it’s a problem, is that the people who are attacking your network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week have access to very sophisticated “hacking” tools. Both the number and the power of these tools have increased dramatically just in the last six months. Hackers now have available to them tools that are hundreds of times more powerful and more sophisticated than ever before. If you doubt this for one moment, type the words “hacking tools” into Google and look at the list of thousands of freely available tools.
Firewall protection is one of the most important pieces to the network vulnerability puzzle. Although your server may not be a target by any one person or entity from a hacking standpoint, it is the non-targeted, brute-force broadcasts that hackers unleash that can cause the most common and serious problems.
A sophisticated hacker is an expert at discovering ways to penetrate network devices that are not correctly updated, managed or improperly configured. Typically, a hacker is not necessarily after your data, but trying to use your hacked server as a launch pad to attack another server, as a spam relay; or even try to turn your server into a public FTP site. Suddenly, your server becomes home to any number of viruses, spyware, or other types of malicious software; from there it just gets worse with a public FTP site becoming a home for truly illegal activities for which you may have legal, if not criminal, responsibility.
Is it worth it to have a professionally configured, managed, monitored and updated firewall?
2. How Close is Your Business to Disaster?
All small to mid-sized firms know they have to back up their data, and most do. However, few have ever tried to restore their data to see if their back up strategy is really working until disaster strikes, and by then it’s too late.
Many companies cannot run their businesses without their computers any more than they can run their business without phones or electricity.
Eight out of ten small businesses do not even have a documented backup procedure that protects small business.
The simple fact is that most small to mid-sized companies are exposing themselves to business risks that they would deem unacceptable, if they were aware of it. Even companies that have made an effort to develop a well thought out back up plan and execute that plan consistently often make the crucial mistake of not testing their backups.
3. We Have Anti-Virus Software on All of our PC’s, so We’ll Never Get a Virus, Right?
Not necessarily. If you are depending on each individual user to download and install every necessary update and run virus scans, you are taking a big risk. All it takes is one user to “forget” a couple of updates, and your company becomes much more vulnerable to viruses. As with many network security issues, a major source of business risk is human error. Viruses can range from fairly annoying to downright destructive.
To avoid risk, it may be wise to use virus protection that is centrally managed, which allows the technical staff to configure the software to “push” updates and scans. This solution significantly reduces the risk of human error, as long as it is correctly installed and maintained, by saving extensive time and resources during installation, and creating a single point of management that makes it easier to check for proper functionality across all devices.
4. Servers, PC’s, and Firewalls Need to be Constantly and Correctly Updated.
There are three different types of updates available for servers and PC’s – Service Packs, security upgrades and patches. Service packs (released infrequently) consist of a fairly significant feature upgrades, some bug fixes and a mix of smaller updates. Security updates (released frequently because they fix network vulnerabilities) are fixes for known security threats. Patches are usually bug fixes. Normally, it requires significant technical experience to decide which updates should be installed and when. This is particularly critical for server and firewall updates, with hackers targeting improperly updated servers and firewalls.
A very large percentage of servers that are exploited by hackers are improperly updated. Network security is a deadly serious issue and the business risk is well into the unacceptable range.
5. We’ve Got a Wireless Network and It’s Working Great.
Is it secured? Securing a wireless network is as easy as setting the security or encryption setting to “on.” However, many companies find that their wireless networks do not function properly when they set it to secure or encrypted mode, so they turn encryption “off.” This is almost worse than having no firewall. Anyone with a wireless connection in the vacinity of your network can now access the company’s whole network. They don’t need any tools to break in – the front door is open – and if you’re lucky, they won’t put themselves on the payroll.
Summary: Manage, don’t react.
Access US Network Support doesn’t wait around for something to go wrong with your network, we make sure it works right BEFORE problems happen!
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