Page 27 - Cyber Warnings

defences as well, requiring more time, more resources and more competition to “borrow” data or
money. Why try to catch one of the ten elephants in a forest, competing with numerous other
predators if it is easier and faster to catch ten chickens in a brood of a million? Cyber-attacks on
small businesses are on the rise for several reasons, one of which is because their protection is
weaker. A single fraud might not bring much, but doing it multiple times, brings more loot at the
end. No need for years of planning to bring the plan into action.

The other reason is not so obvious but it is even more significant. Small businesses are often a
secondary target and serve as a gateway to attacker’s primary target: bigger companies.
Remember the end of the year 2013 when retail giant Target was hit and suffered enormous
data breach? More than 65 million individuals’ personal information was stolen, a breach result
of a small business, working as Target’s HVAC contractor. In today’s inevitably meddlesome
Cloud era, do not falsely push responsibility to the Cloud provider, ignoring and not accepting
responsibility for your own data. Protecting data and behaving responsibly does not stop with
the Cloud. Even the most sophisticated firewall or intrusion detection system cannot stop
criminals if you don’t deal with the weakest link in the chain.

The protection of the data begins and ends with you – The User.

Call an IT company and they can consult and sell you the latest, state-of-the-art antivirus,
intrusion detection/prevention or advanced persistent threat solution. You can listen to their
platitudes about computer security for days. Your protection strength becomes proportional to
the amount of cash you pour in their pockets. Most often than not, they fail to mention, consult
on and sell you adequate education. The biggest concern for the businesses today is their
employees. Unfortunately, this chain in the link is quite weak but, fortunately, easily
strengthened. Employee education on security, raising awareness about the Cyber Crime and
consciousness about the threat landscape could bring businesses the biggest return on
investment. Proper education throughout the entire company is the key to protect your data.
Top-level employees like Senior Managers, Directors and Executives dictate employee
education while rarely educating themselves. Every individual should be educated, from top to
bottom.

About The Author

Sasha is Security Specialist, Azure and Windows Internals Consultant and
Senior Technical Trainer with almost two decades of experience in the
field. He began programming in Assembler, met Windows NT 3.5 and the
love exists since then. He have held various jobs and roles: teacher,
system administrator and engineer, IT manager, consultant, and IT trainer.
Sasha delivers Microsoft, EC-Council and bespoke courses worldwide.
Among many others, he is Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), Certified EC-Council Instructor
(CEI) and is Microsoft MCT Regional Lead.

Sasha can be reached online on Twitter (@SasaKranjac) and at website
http://www.sasakranjac.com/

27 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine January 2017 Edition
Copyright © Cyber Defense Magazine, All rights reserved worldwide