Companies developing their business should have a clear strategy. An action plan by which they will move on. At the same time, it is necessary to protect company information so as not to take two steps back, or even more. And if the company managed to show itself to people, then there will certainly be people who want to annoy it by stealing important information. In this article, NAS Broker, an information security specialist, talks about pitfalls.
Previously, the main purpose of theft was the material component. Now these companies carry more value. This is especially true of banks, insurance organizations and management enterprises.
Sources of Threat
Any company in the office has computers with Internet access. But few people have protection, and attackers take advantage of this by using malware. It is worth remembering about the human factor, which is sometimes out of place. By it we mean mistakes that company employees can make. In addition to these reasons, there are others:
- Unstable operation of devices.
- Open cheating.
- Distortion of documentation.
- Theft, forgery.
- Bookmarks
Sources of threat can be either external or internal. Last - company employees. External - people who are not related to the company.
We’ll talk separately about IT-criminals. They use different methods, pulling trump cards from the deck over and over again. But most often they change part of the information in messages that are addressed to the company, or prevent the forwarding. They can also blackmail employees. Everywhere there are people who will be manipulated.
If we talk about programs, then they use:
- Trojan worms.
- Viruses.
- "Archivers" and pseudo-accelerators of data processing. It is clear that information is provided by an employee of the company without realizing it.
- Bookmarks that contain malware.
Statistics Center
In 2014, SafeNet published a report on hacking networks of organizations.
According to the company, in the first months of 2014 alone, attackers stole more than 200 million records. They had information about both companies and clients. However, only 1% of the data from this number was encrypted. This means that about 200 million records can be used by attackers for their own purposes.
SafeNet also provided statistics on types of information leakage. In 25% of cases there was no theft - the data fell into the network due to employee errors. 61% is a common hack when hackers entered the company’s network via the Internet. In 11% of cases, attackers used an insider. Either bribed a working company, or implemented their own in it. By the way, this method brought 52% of the stolen data from the total. And only in 1% of cases did socially active hackers break into the network. But not for data theft, but for personal reasons.
South Korean Bureau, whose reputation is darker than dystopian
The “winner” of such a race is a credit bureau from South Korea. 104 million records were stolen from the network of this company. In this number were data cards 20 million Koreans. For a moment, 50 million people live in Korea. The Bureau encrypted the data, but only from the Internet. And the attacker appeared in the bureau under the guise of a support specialist. All he did was insert a USB flash drive into a computer containing a database. "Fucked" the bureau - the negative appeared immediately. A curtain.
Enough to understand the problem.
How to protect information? More from NAS Broker: reviews and life hacks
In order to secure the organization from hacking, you need:
- Form a security policy and maintain a report on the protection of information.
- Use technical means.
Do not think that the second point is the basis. In large companies, 70% of the effort and time is spent on the first.
Now let's move on to information security.
Firewalls . Thanks to them, the networks are separated. Because of this, users violate less. Current firewalls are easy to manage and feature rich.
Anti-virus data protection . The efforts of antivirus manufacturers are aimed at protecting corporate networks. Systems that are in antiviruses protect prosk-servers, mail gateways, workstations. This means that attackers will have no way to enter the company’s network. It is recommended that you use two antivirus programs at a minimum.
Attack Detection Systems . They are closely related to malware blocking devices. Such systems focus the attention of the administrator only when the company faces significant damage.
Access control . In order to exclude the possibility of employee data theft, companies automate management and delimit access for employees according to their functionality. Simply put, a staff member cannot see the director’s reports. Steal too. For him they are not.
It’s not enough to protect data from the Internet. It is necessary to make sure that no one can steal company data. Neither from the network, nor inside it. Even Anonymous.