The idea of enterprise cybersecurity seems obvious; put solutions in place that protect sensitive information. But when it comes time to implement security strategies, things get a little more complicated. What types of solutions work best? How are hackers getting in, and what security program will stop them? There is a lot of information about cybersecurity out there, and it can get confusing. To help make sense of everything, we’ve created a list of the top three reasons businesses continue to experience data breaches and how they can be stopped.
Software hasn’t been upgraded
A common mistake many companies make with their security is thinking that it doesn’t come from within a program itself. Each piece of software has its own type of security measures written into it, but as the program gets older and malware advances, the security strategies become less effective. Upgrading software on a regular basis can help decrease the risk of hackers exploiting software security holes and breaching an enterprise network.
A February report from HP found that nearly half of all companies that experienced a cyberattack in 2014 were breached by hackers exploiting old security flaws. According to the report, 44 percent of known breaches in 2014 were the result of unpatched code that was as much as four years old.
“When you look at why people are still getting hacked or breached, I think a big contributor to that is either not knowing if you were patched or if you were patched and you were secure at one point, but something happened in operations that caused you not to be patched again,” said Frank Mong, vice president of solutions enterprise security products at HP.
In order to ensure that software is properly updated, Software Automation solutions from Faronics can come in handy. It automatically installs and updates popular software applications without any manual intervention. Windows updates can also be easily scheduled and managed using Deep Freeze Enterprise.
No anti-virus solution in place
In the just the past year, malware has grown to be more prevalent than ever, with millions of new samples created each month. A recent report by G DATA SecurityLabs found that a new type of malware is discovered less than every four seconds. In the second half of 2014 more than 4 million new strains of malware were identified, an increase of 125 percent from the first half of the year. In total, almost 6 million new types of malware were discovered in 2014. Trojans, rootkits, spyware and downloaders all increased in popularity in the past year, with Trojans remaining the most commonly used type of cyberattack.
Cybercriminals aren’t slowing down their operations, and are in fact becoming more advanced in their methods and are growing more successful with their attacks. While it’s not a fool-proof solution, deploying an anti-virus program can help to dramatically reduce the likelihood that malicious software will infect a network and cause a data breach. Anti-Virus from Faronics offers businesses multiple defence strategies in one central program, utilizing Web filtering, firewall protection, multilayer endpoint security and comprehensive protection for all of the most common types of malware.
Can’t safely remove malicious programs
Even businesses that have proper security solutions in place can fall victim to malware and end up with malicious software installed on enterprise machines. This can be a devastating blow for many companies, as the mitigation process can take days or even weeks and no work can be done in the meantime. A common use of infected computers is for cybercriminals to add them to a larger botnet, meaning enterprise machines are hijacked and used to send additional malware to other computers and so on. Distributed denial of service botnets, the most common kinds, can have hundred of thousands of computers at their disposal.
Most businesses have to wipe their entire systems and rebuild from scratch once they have suffered a major attack and have malicious software on their networks, but Deep Freeze has changed all that. A sophisticated Reboot to Restore feature offered by Faronics allows companies to reboot their devices once malware has been identified and restore them to the predetermined settings. This removes any programs that have been added or settings that have been changed since the last time the configurations were set by an administrator while leaving everything else intact. A simple reboot of the system restores the system to its pristine configuration, thereby eliminating malicious software and lets organizations get back to business as usual.
