By Rob Mackle, Sales and Service Director at www.Backup-Technology.com
May 20, 2016

Backup Technology Cloud Backup Expert Tips: How Do You Avoid Data-Based Cyber Crimes?

If you want to take pleasure in the comfort and relaxation you have created for your organization and yourself, you need to have good sense of self-defense. It is true that you need not to panic or visualize your enemy running and following you always, it is important for you to be conscious of precarious enemies that can occupy your environment to harm your data and other confidential information in your organization. For that reason, you have to always be prepared to deter enemies and protect yourself and your environment against any form of attack. While your digital data is transferred across the Internet, you have to be aware of the hostility agencies responsible for Cyber crime as they can easily pose threat to the safety of your digital data.

The major cause of Cyber crime is often pure unprofessionalism of employees. Thousands of Internet devices like laptops and mobile devices loaded with confidential information get lost every year. The problem is that the majority of these lost laptops and mobile devices are not protected with hard drive encryption or even anti-theft software. In addition, some employees often share passwords with each other and even with their co-workers that are not originally granted access to the password simply because of their ignorance about the value of the data in their procession. Some employees normally go as far as using file sharing tool to share files with contractors and suppliers. The worst of all is that some employees may unkindly create data branches for either retribution or for personal gain.

At times, there can be threat to the security of your data by some of the employees that have left your organization. An Ex-employee whose right and privilege has not been deleted or removed from your computing system can easily exploit the information either for personal benefit or to the advantage of competitors. Disgruntled ex-employees can go as far as infecting your computing system with malware and virus so as to corrupt, modify or even change the entire data stores of your company. You can easily avoid this by ensuring that you remove the right or privilege you gave to any employee when he or she leaves your organization.

Though, threats from external data are rare yet, they cannot be overlooked while considering the Cyber crime that can affect your data. Information transmitted over your network can easily be hijacked by eavesdroppers by listening at open ports. Your data can be susceptible if you store them to a third party Internet based cloud backup provider. This can easily happen when their system is compromised, access is granted to unauthorized personnel by employees, the provider goes bankrupt or drop their servers maybe due to financial difficulties or other similar reasons. And you need to know that your data can be vulnerable when you share them over the Internet.

So, there is a need for you to be careful and security conscious about Cyber crimes. You need to make some required safety precautions to protect and safeguard your data.

Some of the ways to protect your data against Cyber crimes include:

  • Educating your employees about the need for data protection,
  • Encrypting data in while in flight and at rest,
  • Interviewing and auditing users activity logs, as well as other activity logs,
  • Ensuring adequate user management of data, and
  • Giving adequate and frequent attention to data against any form of data crimes.

About the Author: Rob Mackle is Sales and Service Director at Backup-Technology (an iomart company), an Asigra powered cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions provider. Rob blogs here.

 

 

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