Monday, 23 July 2012

Is Your Info Secure?

By Daniel Turbin


If you are a business owner, you no doubt know how crucial the flow of good information is to your success, but what kind of time have you spent, truly, guaranteeing that your information is secure and you've got technology in place to protect your business?

For many of us, especially tiny, often harried business owners, the notion of doing more than just the basics to protect your info is given a brief thought at the very best. Who's got the time, after all? There are a thousand other details to attend to solely to keep all of the wheels of your business spinning, and for most protection against hacking is rarely considered in concrete terms. Sadly , it's all too often true that little brainpower is given to the impacts a successful hacking attack can have on your business till it's too late. Until it happens to you.

Do not be that person. Even if you should happen to feel as though you're much too pushed to make more than a token effort at data protection, if your complete business comes crashing down around you because you did not take the time, then where will you be? All your efforts to that point will have been for nothing.

The fundamentals of information security are reasonably simple and straightforward. There are a number of off the shelf packages ( professional grade pathogen scanners, firewalls, and the like ) that will at least put you on the path, but do not make the error of thinking that tossing a few pieces of software at the difficulty will provide solutions to it for you.

That's a great start, but honestly, unless you really focus on the issue, those kinds of ad hoc efforts will do little more than slow a determined hacker down for a bit. It may buy you time, however it won't on its own, buy you security.

For that, you need the help of a trained professional, and if you haven't done so already, I beg you to consider the idea of speaking to a trained security expert. Organize for an audit of your system. Arrange for it to be stress tested in ridicule attacks. This is the sort of real world test which will quickly exhibit where the openings are in your firm's IT security, and then, supplied with that information, you will be ready to take steps to correct whatever issues are found.



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