Information Security (IT) plays a vital role in the development of national/international businesses and global economies. It is the most important part of your business and helps in improving vital organisational process, maintaining a competitive advantage, achieving cost efficiency and driving revenue growth. This is one of the main reasons it is imperative to ensure all relevant security protocols are in place for the efficient operation of your business. Have you been facing network security issues lately? If so, avoid these common (and overlooked) IT security flaws:
Lack of IT Personnel
As mentioned earlier, IT and network is the most important part of your business. When one person is managing all critical IT security tasks, your business could be one car crash away from potential business continuity issues. Therefore, to ensure everything stays in order and your IT has proper disaster recovery planning, incident response, and good documents, it is vital you outsource to a professional IT security company that understands the various kinds of threats to your business and that IT personnel issues are not “just an IT problem”.
Limited Patching Of Software
Arguably the most dangerous of all flaws is outdated and obsolete firmware and software of network infrastructure systems, servers, and workstations. Not only does this increase the risk of data leakage, malware infections and internal exploitation, but it also facilitates external denial of service attacks that could possibly cause great damage to your business.
Make sure your IT department is performing all the necessary security and infrastructure upgrades needed to maximise the efficiency of your network. This way, you will be able to prevent threats, such as insider and external (viruses and hackers that could possible edit, modify or delete important business information.
Not Checking Access Controls
Information Technology is a complex field that requires knowledge with regards to various computer resources, network technologies, and access controls. Therefore, if your access controls or privileges haven’t been checked for years, it could possibly increase the risk of unauthorised personnel editing, modifying or deleting important organisational information.
Fuelling the fire are weak passwords on various non-active directory systems. These are especially dangerous as they fall outside typical IT security audits, management and controls, hence increasing the risk of external attacks (as they can easily crack passwords and gain access to or modify important data. To prevent this, check access controls on a daily basis.
Mobile Threats and Insecurities
With ever- technology constantly evolving, mobile devices are more advanced. This makes managing security and privacy a great concern and a challenge for security professionals. So, just because your executives mandate smartphones for everyone doesn’t mean their deployment was well planned. Businesses nowadays must consider protection from mobile threats and insecurities, as all it takes is one loss for your business to end up in the data breach halls of shame.
So, now that you are familiar with these common IT security flaws mentioned above, make sure to avoid them at all costs. Keep in mind cybercriminals will continue to adopt evasive technologies to enter your devices and steal vital information. Therefore, it is your duty to put a halt to them by ensuring your business is protected by the latest IT security technologies.
