How Data Recovery Solutions Protect Your Business

Are you aware of what’s happening in your business at every moment in time? Unfortunately, hackers and malcontents don’t send postcards letting you know that they’re about to infiltrate your security systems. You may not realize that something disastrous has happened until it’s too late — and you have already lost access to data and possibly even your critical business systems. With robust data recovery solutions, your business is secure and protected at all times.

Benefits of Data Recovery Solutions

Today’s businesses are highly dependent on data: from websites to customer service, to shipping orders accurately and on time. Without access to our mission-critical data, the business quickly grinds to a halt. Whether the issue was caused by a disgruntled employee or accidental file deletion or even an electrical surge, data recovery solutions include a backup of important information and business systems, allowing you to spin up the digital side of your business again much more quickly than if you didn’t have a robust solution in place. Additional benefits of having a trusted data recovery solution in place include:

  • Fast and efficient recovery of critical files and business resources
  • Protect the reputation of your company should you experience an outage
  • Maintain employee productivity and the ability to generate revenue
  • Ensure that your competition doesn’t overtake your business while you’re in an extended recovery mode

A robust data recovery solution (BDS) is far more than a cloud-based backup, however. It is a mechanism that allows you to weather the unexpected storms of business and reduce the negative effects of unplanned downtime.

When Your Systems Fail

Bringing your business back online after a significant outage can take days or even weeks without a backup and data recovery solution in place. During this time you might lose clients, frustrate your vendors and lose the trust of your prospects if you’re unable to deliver on promises or requests. The cost of downtime is significant and difficult to measure as its a mix of expenses, lost productivity and the cost of lost business. Even overtime for your technology staff should be factored into the analysis of what it costs if your systems fail.

Unified Solutions for Complex Data

The data that are used to run today’s businesses are varied and complex and can be stored in a variety of different buckets or locations. A single weak point in your organization’s digital armor can be used as an entry point to infiltrate other systems and wreak havoc on your business. Everything from your Exchange Server to customer relationship management software and your website are vulnerable. Each of these data sets are often stored on separate servers, usually with unique file structures. The level of complexity that is introduced by attempting to create backups of all of this data are exceptional — not to mention the challenges presented by monitoring the health of each of your various systems.

Protection You Can Trust

When you work with a trusted backup and data recovery solutions partner, you can be assured that backups are granular, fast and efficient. You should have easy access to dashboards that show your data security and allow you to quickly compress and de-duplicate your files. Flat and highly structured data should be stored safely, and recovery should take only a few hours — not days. Th level of protection found in CoreBDR, the Coretelligent Backup and Data Recovery Solution, would be difficult to build within your business infrastructure, which is why it is so important to work with organizations that have deep experience in protecting various types of businesses.

Many organizations will experience an outage throughout their years in business. However, the businesses that are fully prepared with a robust backup and recovery solution in place are the ones who will be able to quickly regain a high level of operation. Contact the team at Coretelligent at 855-841-5888 or fill out our quick online contact form for more information. We partner with the best security teams in the business, including Veeam for encryption to protect your data whether it’s at rest or in transit

by

Most Common Types of Cyber Attacks & How to Prevent Them

It seems you can barely turn on the news or read headlines from your favorite news site without seeing yet another major corporation falling prey to cyber attacks. Whether they are caused by phishing, data infiltration or even brute force, the barrage of assaults seems never-ending. However, for every organization that is victimized, hundreds if not thousands of others are able to protect themselves and their sensitive data from penetration. Here are tips to prevent some of the most common types of cyber attacks by proactively managing your risk profile.

Spear Phishing and Whaling Attacks

As organizations become more global and attacks become more sophisticated, what used to be relatively simple to spot has now become a nightmare even for savvy internet users. As recently as the last five years, phishing attacks began morphing from poorly-spelled email pleas to send money to a prince overseas to become highly detailed and realistic-looking asks that appear to be from executives within your organization. Email address masking and other tools that are often utilized by marketers to create a more pleasing customer experience are being leveraged in nefarious ways by individuals who are attempting to defraud your organization. Information gathered from social media and public profiles are leveraged to define a picture of a specific executive or group, and then that information is used in “whaling” attacks — so named because they are truly going after the big fish in the sea.

How to prevent spear phishing and whaling attacks:

  • Encourage staff members to make their social media profiles private, and be wary of accepting friend requests from individuals they do not know
  • Create an educational series to show how these attacks differ from valid communication
  • Use up-to-date email filters, anti-phishing tools and utilize active protection at the system network level
  • Teach caution as employees click on links embedded in emails

Cross-Site Scripting

Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks are some of the wiliest because a user is unlikely to realize that they have even been hacked. Instead of going after the host website, these snippets of code are built to run when the page loads via a comment or other auto-loading section of the site. The dangerous snippet then attacks the user’s login and password information and other personal details, exfiltrating them for later use.

How to prevent cross-site scripting:

  • Limit the amount of user-provided data on your websites and web apps to only what is absolutely necessary
  • Regularly scan your website using a vulnerability scanning tool to look for XSS

Poor Compliance Behavior

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to maintain cybersecurity within your organization is through continual compliance monitoring and behavioral review. Users tend to reuse the same password on multiple platforms, increasing the chance that there could be a major security breach within your organization. Passwords are often simplistic or easily guessed, especially when cyber attackers leverage social engineering to enhance their knowledge of their prey. According to the Harvard Business Review, vulnerabilities were caused by insiders in more than 60% of the attacks in 2016. This is especially true for industries such as healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing where there are large quantities of valuable intellectual property, personal information and financial assets available for the taking.

How to prevent poor compliance behavior:

  • Regularly audit access to key systems, ensuring that access is restricted to individuals who actively need it
  • Review compliance guidelines with supervisors and staff on a regular basis
  • Require strict password guidelines on a rigorous reset schedule
  • Implement log management and active system monitoring to detect intrusions as they’re happening

While no systems are infallible, there are ways to protect your organization from the dangers that are associated with doing business today. Protect your business and your staff with the dedicated support structure of CoreArmor from Coretelligent. Our behavioral monitoring, asset discovery and reporting provide 360 degrees of protection with our Defense-in-Depth (DiD) strategy. Contact us today at 855-841-5888 for the office nearest you, or fill out our online contact form for assistance.

by

Why Data Backup is Important for Your Business

Nearly everyone has experienced the problems of data backup on a small scale. Anytime you’re in the middle of creating a document, spreadsheet or presentation on your software of choice and had the power blink out knows that you’re going to lose everything since your last save point. The same is true on a macro scale for organizations: if something impacts your ability to access information, you risk losing a great deal of data and transactions that are crucial to your business. Proactive backup and recovery procedures provide you with a level of comfort knowing that your information is safeguarded, even in the event of a cybersecurity incident or natural disaster. Whether you prefer an on-premise backup strategy or a cloud-based solution, see why data backup is critically important for your business.

Human Error

While technology generally operates within the strict guidelines under which it was programmed, people are unpredictable and can easily make the wrong decision — even with the best of intentions. Everything from using a password that is less-than-secure to sharing passwords or hooking their infected smartphone into your network can have a catastrophic and spiraling impact on your business. Stringent backup and data recovery strategies allow you to quickly remediate any problems and get back online quickly.

Hardware Failures

Every once in a while, you will find that a computer or a server behaves in a way that cannot be predicted. The problem is often something that’s not detectable in any traditional way, but the havoc that a suddenly-crashed server creates is difficult to overstate. Downtime is extremely expensive for organizations, with some businesses estimating that an extensive outage can cost up to $100,000 per hour for large organizations. If your workstations, servers and centralized databases are not being backed up, you are opening your organization up to a painful future situation.

Cyber Attacks

Accidents happen, employees make mistakes — but what about when a cybercriminal sets out to maliciously damage your business? The devastation that a talented cybercriminal can create in a very short period of time should not be underestimated. While ransomware overall is dropping and fileless attacks are on the rise, the recent NonPetya ransomware attack cost TNT Express $300 million in 2017, forcing the organizations to reinstall over 4,000 servers and 45,000 computers. The sheer scale of this undertaking is difficult to comprehend, it could have been much worse. No consumer data was exposed, but the serious disruption caused an extensive rebuild of the organization’s infrastructure. The organization now calls their cybersecurity a “competitive advantage”, admitting that it was “basically average” before the attack.

While you like to believe that individuals are inherently good, there is always the possibility that a disgruntled employee will remove files from the system or open a vulnerability. Protecting against these situations requires not only the proactive Core BDR data recovery solution, but also CoreArmor to prevent situations from occurring. Core BDR not only backs up flat files, but also allows for restoration of both virtual machines and data in a one-step process. Together, these solutions provide a comprehensive security, backup and restoration solution for your business. Contact the data security experts at Coretelligent today at 855-841-5888 or fill out our online form

by

5 Ways Proactive Cyber Security Impacts Your Businesses

The number and severity of cyber attacks continue to accelerate, making it critically important that your business is protected from these attacks. This is particularly true of organizations that store a great deal of personal and financial information such as finance and healthcare institutions. The attacks on your data are continually evolving, and it can be a real challenge for your IT department to stay on top of the latest software patches and hardware updates that need to be in place to ensure a heightened level of security for your business. Here are 5 ways that proactive cyber security impacts your business.

1. Reduce the Possibility of Intrusions

There are a variety of ways that proactive cyber security helps reduce intrusions. Ongoing staff training and the introduction of security best practices as well as blocking malware, spam, phishing and other bots are all tactics that will help keep your organization’s vital information safe from harm and authorized access.

2. Improve the Speed of Remediation

Even with the best cyber security tools available, it’s possible that your organization could be infiltrated. In the event of an intrusion, you need to know that your technology support partner is on the job and will quickly remediate the issues and get your business back online quickly. Active monitoring from a centralized location helps reduce the threat of vulnerabilities by making response and remediation a core part of your cybersecurity stance.

3. Enhance Overall Network Security

No business is immune from penetration, and some of the simplest or most innocent deviations from your security strategy can cause a negative impact on your business. For instance, did you know that nearly 60% of threats to financial institutions originated inside the business? This statistic is especially frightening when you consider that financial institutions are one of the top three industries that are being targeted by cybercriminals.

4. Increase Consumer Confidence

The vast majority of business technology leaders believe that enhanced security protocols aid in earning consumer confidence and trust in your brand. This is one of the key reasons that consumers check the Better Business Bureau rating of an organization before they make a decision to work with them. You also see many websites that have “Trusted” or “Approved” badges from various organizations posted. Consumers like to know that others have had a positive experience with your brand, and having solid network security procedures helps protect their faith.

5. Curtail Compliance Issues

When you work with cybersecurity professionals, everything from behavioral monitoring to compliance reporting is proactively managed. Standards for compliance with PII (Personally Identifiable Information) continue to morph and become more stringent, making it crucial to stay on top of the latest advances or risk costly government fines. Log management, access control and more are all a part of maintaining active intrusion prevention.

Maintaining an active security posture is essential, especially for financial and healthcare institutions. At Coretelligent, our security professionals have a depth of knowledge around cybersecurity that helps them make the right recommendations to protect your business. Learn more about CoreArmor, our premier cyber security solution, and see how implementing this next-generation tool will help provide a holistic level of protection to your organization. Contact us today at 1-855-841-5888 or download our complimentary whitepaper on the State of Cyber Security today.

by