MSPNetworks Blog

Data security isn’t a matter to be taken lightly, as too many businesses have found out the hard way. Unfortunately, there are far too many simple ways to correct common security issues - enough that it’s foolish not to do so. We’ll review a few ways to fix security issues, after discussing one of, if not the, most egregious security failings in modern history.

The Equifax Problem

Sometime between May and July of 2017, the credit-reporting giant Equifax suffered a massive data breach that, as of this writing, exposed 148.1 million records containing the personally identifiable information of their customers. In other words, this breach exposed the data of almost half of the population of the United States of America.

In the aftermath of the Equifax data breach scandal, former CEO Richard Smith was cross-examined by Congress. Upon hearing Smith’s defense of “human and technology errors,” Chairman of the House energy and commerce committee Greg Walden quipped, “I don’t think that we can pass a law that fixes stupid.”

How to Fix Your Business’ Security

While Walden may be correct that stupid can’t be fixed by legislation, it may be able to be mitigated through the faithful enforcement of certain standards and practices. These standards should be enforced both on an organizational level, and on a case-by-case, personal basis.

First, let’s review what you should enforce in your organization:

1. Compliance should be the baseline - Unfortunately, compliance with regulations often does not equal true data security. Instead of looking at compliance as being the ultimate goal for your business, consider it the first step to your business security strategy.
2. Vulnerabilities need to be promptly remediated - It is astounding that so many exploits rely on known vulnerabilities… a full 99 percent of them.  Furthermore, other attack vectors often utilize vulnerabilities that are a half a year old at least. Patching these vulnerabilities as soon as possible will help cut down on threats to your business’ data and infrastructure. 
3. Data security needs to be centralized, organized, and assigned - While security should be a shared responsibility throughout the company, there needs to also be someone taking lead and accepting responsibility for ensuring that data is properly distributed in a secure fashion. Part of this responsibility should be to implement access controls, ensuring that the data only can spread to whomever it needs to and no one else.

Encouraging Your Employees’ Security

Of course, your employees are largely in control of how secure your company remains. This could be a bad thing, unless they are also held to certain best practices that keep data, and the accounts that can access it, secure. There are a few basic rules you can enforce among your staff to help encourage them to act securely.

1. Lazy credential habits - There are a variety of behaviors to adopt that can better protect the accounts and solutions that your employees have. First of all, the classic password problem: reusing the same password for every account. If one or more of your employees does this, each one is essentially creating a master key that someone could use to access everything in their life, including your data. Neglecting to set a passcode of some sort for a mobile device can cause the same issue. An effective way to remedy this kind of behavior is to utilize a password management system. That way, your employee can reduce the number of passwords they have to remember, without sacrificing security.
2. Oversharing - While you can’t necessarily control what your employees do in their off-hours, you should reinforce how easily a cybercriminal could piece together their passwords through some examination of their social media, especially if they subscribe to the lazy credential habits we just reviewed. See if they’ll avoid sharing personal anecdotes or information without first restricting the audience that can see that particular post. At the very least, they should have their social media accounts set so that only their approved friends can see their content. Furthermore, do your best to avoid oversharing from the office. Images can easily show confidential information if you aren’t careful, by accidentally capturing an invoice or your customer relationship management solution pulled up on a screen in the picture. Review what you are about to post before taking the image and before you share it online. 
3. Using the wrong Wi-Fi - While public Wi-Fi connections may be convenient, you should remind your employees that this convenience comes at a price: the security of public Wi-Fi is suspect at best. They should be warned against doing anything especially important over a public Wi-Fi signal, like banking or checking their email.

Data security is a critically important consideration, in part because there are so many ways that it can be undermined. We have some solutions to offer that can help keep your business secure (despite what may sometimes seem to be your employees’ best efforts). Reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001 today!

Server units--you’ll find them in most offices out there, but they are all used for different purposes. Since well-maintained data is so essential to the success of many organizations, it’s important to keep your server units in proper working order. Today we’ll discuss the best ways to make sure your servers are in peak performance.

What Causes Server Room Problems?
Even some of the little problems facing server rooms can create considerable trouble for your business. Of course, we are talking about an excess amount of dust and other small contaminants. It’s difficult to control and tricky to clean, as it can be blown all over the place (including into server components). When lots of dust accumulates, it can act as an insulator, increasing the overall temperature of server units by about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Just like the human body, an increase of temperature like this can be catastrophic.

Other contaminants include particles generated by humans, like skin particles and dander. Wear and tear from the devices themselves can also become a culprit in this regard, as belt debris and metal shavings can accumulate over time. By far the worst culprit is the soles of the feet. It’s estimated that around 80 percent of this damaging debris enters a server room in this fashion.

Mitigating Issues Through Maintenance and Prevention
Imagine how much damage could be done to your business if your server were to fail. All of the data you were supposed to protect is suddenly lost in a puff of smoke, despite your careful efforts to ensure it stays secure from both internal and external threats. Therefore, it’s extremely important your business keeps maintenance and prevention as a priority. This can be accomplished by adhering to strict cleanliness standards and keeping contaminants to a minimum.

Keep Things Clean
If you can keep your server room free of dust and grime, it’s much easier to keep it in proper working order. You should always leave comprehensive cleaning jobs to professionals, but you can take action now to minimize the chance of this dust influencing your server’s operations. For example, if your server room has people frequently coming and going, you can vacuum it to keep the floors clear of any contaminants. If cleaning your server components has you concerned, you can use an antistatic cloth to keep them clean, as well as cans of compressed air to blow dust out of the way of particularly important components.

Minimizing Contamination
You can also take certain measures to ensure the dust and grime that accumulates in your server room doesn’t become a problem. You can try installing air filters, as well as using an entryway room with special mats to keep grime and dirt from getting in. Other measures like hats and booties can be used to minimize the amount of human contamination that makes it into your server room. In fact… that’s the best way to keep your server room clean--just not going in at all.

To learn more about how MSPNetworks can help your business take care of this important technology, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.