Tag: IT consulting firm

Your IT systems are no longer safe unless you have strong data security measures in place. 

Data security has become more than a legal obligation to follow a bunch of compliances. When the security of your customer’s sensitive information is threatened, it’s time to take a step back and analyze what you can do to improve safety.

The data threats can be of any form: data loss through cyberattacks, phishing collection of personal information, virus attack, or insider theft. You can strengthen data security by enforcing strict access controls, protocols, strong firewalls, and antivirus and antimalware protection systems.

This blog will take you through various things you need to know to improve your data security.

The Importance of Data Security

Before you look into the details of what data security means and how you can enhance it, let’s start by analyzing the main concerns: Data security is defined as the laws and regulations that ensure the safety of people’s personal information (e.g., credit cards) and information systems in various business, medical, and technical fields. It’s time to think of data security as a responsibility and not a means to comply with regulations. 

You have data from users, end-users, and business partners, all of which contain private and sensitive data. Before choosing any third-party service provider, let’s break down each type of information and what you need to know. 

End-User Data: They include information such as identity and authentication details, geo-locations, credit card information, bank details, phone numbers, etc. These may be maintained internally but will often leak to another party. 

Application Data: This is the code that runs on your computer. For instance, when a website requests a particular piece of information on your computer, this is what you are typing in.

When such data is hacked, it can threaten the very foundation of your business and, at the least, lose your customers’ trust. This is why you need to give the most to such data.

Reasons for Weak Data Security

The main reason for weak data security is human error. Your employees may accidentally click on an insecure link or email attachment that contains malware. Other possible causes include lack of training, lack of control on employees, weakly trained staff, and employees who have a poor understanding of network administration. 

If this sounds like your environment, start doing these three things: 

• Add passwords to every new login. This way, when a user gets a password for a new account, they won’t reuse the same password. 
• Install virus protection and antivirus software on all computers and mobile devices. 
• Don’t email sensitive or confidential information to any external sources. That includes emails, text messages, and social media platforms.

How to Improve the Data Security

An effective data security system takes an in-depth look at data and its security needs while changing data processing systems or building new ones. Here are some of the ways to improve your data security.

• 1. Create Strong Passwords

With the increasing usage of mobile apps, password leaks have been a frequent occurrence. It’s unfortunate, but passwords are one of the weakest links to protect our data, exposed more than 30,000 times per day, according to SplashData. We are all guilty of not changing our passwords often enough. This is because most people do not make a conscious effort to change their passwords often enough, or even at all.

The damage can be difficult to recognize and stop. However, there are steps we can take to improve the situation. The first step is not to use a shared password. 

• 2. Set Up Firewalls

Your firewall’s purpose is to stop unauthorized devices from accessing network resources and the internet. Make sure you have enabled port forwarding for all your access points to ensure the best results. This allows port forwarding for critical destinations to work. 

You can specify the port ranges in which access to these destinations is allowed. 

• 3. Enable Access Controls

Using Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions, SSO is a secure system in which one login system can provide you with multiple access points such as web, mail, data, and so on. It is an easier way to protect data and grant access to authorized users. You can create multiple accounts for each of your employees. You can also configure password management systems for each of these accounts.

• 4. Create Encryption

Encrypting your data helps ensure that nobody can access and misuse the data stored on your systems, even if they get their hands on it. You can use standard encryption to add“secret” information into a file, creating a code that a person cannot read without the appropriate decryption key. And you can also simply enable 2FA for your login attempts.

Wrapping Up

Data security is no longer about whether or not you’re complying with rules. Instead, it’s if you’re implementing a security approach that a knowledgeable insider or hacker can’t circumvent.

Being hacked often happens because a person or company is unaware or uneducated about some rudimentary security protocols. Educate your employees to adopt the right security practices to keep your organization safe.

Did you know that many of the hacking incidents could’ve been avoided by proper penetration testing?

When you want to know how vulnerable your system is, the IT team goes for penetration testing. It’s also known as pen testing or ethical hacking in the colloquial language.

As a part of the penetration testing, the IT team tries to break down their defense using various techniques and new technologies. Such tests are vital for any organization to understand where they stand in data security and prepare for the following steps to amp it up.

In this blog, we’ll learn about the basics of performing penetration testing and the step-by-step procedure.

What Happens in Penetration Testing?

There’s no one way of conducting penetration testing simply because there’s no one way that hackers use to gain access. So the security team or the IT consulting firm performing the testing should think outside the box about the possible ways of attacks to the infrastructure.

So, in penetration testing, you can either test through individual applications, IT applications, standalone systems, servers, or networks or through the base of the IT infrastructure as a whole. The security team then identifies the weak points in the system that can make your entire IT infrastructure vulnerable.

Usually, the testers will sit down with the official website, platforms you commonly use, or your IP addresses and break down the firewall. This may range from gaining access by obtaining a password from any employee to running complex hacking algorithms.

There are several types of penetration tests:

• Wireless testing
• Internal and external testing
• Blind testing
• Social engineering
• Physical testing
• Targeted testing
• Double-blind testing

Since the threat can come from any side and in any way, the testers need to be thorough about the different points of access to the systems and conduct pen testing through all of it. This should be performed regularly to make sure that there aren’t any new loopholes coming up. You can hire an expert IT consulting firm providing security services to help you out.

5 Step Process in a Penetration Testing

Step 1: Understanding the Test Expectations

In a penetration test, there are several ways to go about it. While this is strictly a white hat practice, we need to venture into the gray or black hat practices to look at the vulnerabilities from the hacker’s perspective. From these black and gray hat tests, you’ll most likely identify the external vulnerabilities. 

Step 2: Setting Limits

While you’re planning the pen testing, you may also want to set the limitations of the test. For example, do you want the testers only to identify the vulnerable points of entry, or do you want them to gain access to your data?

Setting such boundaries for your testing will give a structure for the testers based on your current conditions.

Step 3: Reconnaissance

This is where you get down the nitty-gritty details of the test. You’ll consider the types of tests you’ll be performing, the systems, and the trouble points that need to be addressed. You’ll also be gathering the basic details of the target like domain names, IP addresses, and other important information you can collect.

Essentially, you’ll be collecting data to breach the network.

Read More: How to Prevent Data Security Breaches

Step 4: System Breach Attempt

With the information you’ve collected in the previous step, you’ll put them to action. You can use any software or write any custom scripts to gain access to the internal information.

There may also be some technical discovery during the survey that indicates weakness in a particular area. The tester can attack this weakness through several hacking methods and try to gain access.

If the testing team cannot find any vulnerabilities during the survey, they may resort to getting the username and password through phishing attacks and social engineering.

Once the tester has gained access to the system, there are two ways to go based on the initial requirements. They can either mark it as a point of vulnerability or gain access, retain access and check how long it can sustain.

Step 5: Analysis of the Test

Once the testing team has completed the pen test, the last thing is to collate the findings. This will be:

• A list of vulnerabilities, 
• The amount of sensitive data accessed,
• The time is taken for the system to respond to the threat,
• The duration the tester was able to retain access without detection, and
• The following steps to prevent them.

Once you’ve identified the vulnerabilities, you can quickly go about fixing them with the help of your IT team and prevent hacking attacks. You can strengthen your firewalls, implement zero-trust security, enforce new security practices for your employees and increase your overall data security.

Conclusion 

When you think about the volume of work an IT team has to do to conduct this test and take steps to increase security, it’s overwhelming. This is when you can look for the guidance of an experienced security team from an IT consulting firm.

Layer One Networks is one of the most trusted IT consulting firms offering security services in Corpus Christi. From managed services to enforcing high-security features for your IT infrastructure, we provide a broadband of IT services to ramp your team’s productivity. Reach out to us now to discuss more details.