While it is impossible to protect confidential information 100% of the time, regular risk assessments and real-time monitoring can go a long way.
While it is impossible to protect confidential information 100% of the time, regular risk assessments and real-time monitoring can go a long way toward ensuring your business does not suffer from breaches via the dark web – a segment of the Internet that isn’t indexed by search engines and that is the bane of existence for businesses whose confidential information has been violated. The dark web is comprised of private, encrypted networks that cannot be found by the surface-web search engines and can’t be accessed by traditional browsers. Most sites on the darknet require the use of special software to access them.
Businesses can enjoy greater peace of mind by partnering with an Information Technology firm that will stay on top of things by conducting regular dark web scans and monitoring. Scans and monitoring services can alert a business through the use of real-time threat intelligence and immediately notify you of suspicious activity including:
- References to your company or employees in treacherous sites and forums
- Stolen corporate documents, financial data or intellectual property
- Disclosure of personal details for high level executives and directors
- Exposed company credentials stolen from data breaches of other online systems
Monitoring further protects against a further breach since it allows for early detection of compromised information.
A regular check of your credit reports is another basic and proactive measure to guard against breaches. Any information that has been compromised should be considered a red flag.
Schedule regular backups to the cloud or to an external hard drive to ensure that all of your critical data is stored safely and can be recovered quickly in the event of an attack.
Change passwords frequently to prevent compromising your networks’ security.
Make sure your network is protected by secure firewalls. You might want to consider a managed firewall service that can act as an extension of your IT service.
You can have the most secure firewalls and extensive network monitoring in place, but it won’t do much good if your employees aren’t educated on the importance of safe browsing, password security and how to recognize a phishing email.
And perhaps most importantly, don’t have your head in the sand! Too many businesses fall victim to often devastating data breaches simply because they thought they’d never be targeted. If your business uses the Internet and has customer, client or patient information or personal information about you and your employees, then sorry to say, you are indeed a target. Data collected by any business – no matter the size or industry – has the potential to attract the criminally intent. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst!