Each entrepreneur of any scale has thought how to prevent hacking in a company and how to protect information system and website from penetration. The outcomes of the attack might be very challenging, as it is shown by numerous examples. Even the companies that could have been defined as rich enough to allow any protection used to be attacked and had to restore their client base and reputation. At the same time, even the advanced methods of protection will work if the managers and common employees are not aware about the basic safety rules and do not consider the most common safety measures. Education of the workers in the aspect of information security should become a primary task of a company to prevent hacker’s attack, as common people usually are not able to estimate the outcomes of their irresponsibility or lack of attention to the details. If managers and owners of the companies develop a right communication and system of strict safety regulations for the workers, a level of cyberattacks will become significantly lower. A lot of company employees help black hat hackers in their mission and are even unaware of this fact, as they cannot estimate a danger of their carelessness. At the same time, preventing hacking is easier with responsible approach. A regular safety audit and development of workers are the measure that should become obligatory for each company in which a safety is valued.
If you are sure that you know how to prevent hacking and considered all the dangers, you probably forgot that there are other people working in the company and they can make a lot of mistakes. For hacking a company’s computer a physical presence of a hacker in your office is not needed, it is usually done remotely and rather promptly by real professionals. Your own employees are capable of making a lot of security issues simply by their careless attitude to the most important aspects of their work. One of such aspects is a process of creating passwords. If your employees are responsible for their passwords, they might treat this duty irresponsibly and apply a classical ‘qwerty’ password for the account that has critical information about the company. From the other point of view, some companies make system administrators create password for workers that will appropriate from the point of view of all the demands. At the same time, you should never underestimate creativity of your workers! The ways to fail security even with the strongest password are numerous if employees do not want to consider the importance of these factors. Some of them press a magic “remember password” button and ruin all your security efforts. The other might write long and complicated passwords on the stickers and put them on the table, fix them in the notes of smartphones that, of course, can also be easily hacked in case of necessity. To address the issue of passwords and their reliability and prevent hacker from a temptation to attack, any company should introduce important rules and trace their following by the employees. Password policy should be invented and developed by the company for preventing hacking, and it should be kept confidential even considering the fact that it will be based on the common safety rules.
A strong password should consist of random letters and digits generated without any logic.
No names of pets, children, parents, spouses, celebrities or best friends, no dates of birth or death, no favorite dishes should be used for passwords, as they are hacked easily. Moreover, a password should not be fixed in any device like smartphone or tablet as all the measures become meaningless at all.
There should be different passwords for all the accounts that are used for work.
Email, banking account of an employee, and any other personal cabinet should be protected in different way. It seems to be logical, but there are a lot of people who use their Facebook password for the work purposes. It might be resulted in the necessity to conduct a full restoration of the business information and the reason will seem to be completely mysterious.
Any passwords should be regularly updated by the workers even it seems to be a complicated task.
Otherwise even the strongest passwords can be easily hacked.
Two-factor authentication should be applied in all the possible cases for a purpose of preventing hacking, for instance, for Dropbox.
It will exclude any opportunities of hacking, as there will be a necessity of physical possession of a device connected with the account, and the possibility of this factor is rather low.
Advanced password manager application might help.
Software like Keepass will prevent workers from creating dangerous and junky passwords that are potentially able to harm the information system of the whole organization. Integration of the password manager should be agreed with information security administration of the company to choose the most convenient and appropriate application.
Hacking company can become an easy task for a hacker if basic safety measures are neglected. Additionally to passwords importance awareness, the workers in the company should understand the basic ideas of network security. In the other words, they should understand which websites can be visited and which ones should be avoided and why such approach is considered to be among the most effective ways to prevent hacking. Security should turn into a priority not only for managers and specific department but for the rest of the company workers. Moreover, to stop hackers, there should be a security department instructed for tracing whether everything is fine with a company network and if all the safety measures are considered by the workers. White Hat Hackers and System Testing To prevent hacking in a company, you should think like a black hat hackers and remove all the existing vulnerabilities that might turn his attention or you can simply hire a team of professional white hat hackers for this purpose. They have a super-skill to understand the actions of black hat hackers, predict them, and prepare a website or any information system, or web application to the possibility of the cyberattack. All the attacks are agreed with a customer before they take place, a team has its plan and purposes, and that is why this kind of hacking is called ethical. If a white hat hacker finds some vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and mistakes in a working of the system, he will not use them for the criminal purposes; they will be removed to make any penetration impossible and prevent hacker’s attack. For a common user who uses information system and website in the usual way such vulnerabilities are invisible, they cannot be traced or noticed without special skills and tools used by white hat hackers. Thus, only professionals are able to evaluate a real thread. The most popular service that is provided by white hat hackers is penetration testing, it is also one of the most effective measures to facilitate safety in a company. Protect against hackers – make sure that your information cannot be reached by anybody who is not authorized for this purpose. During a penetration testing, a white hat hacker makes a common attack on system and website to understand a topical level of protection and to suggest a remedy if there are some security challenges. After this procedure, a system if fully restored and nothing is damaged because of his actions.
Want to get fresh educational content and tips on Cybersecurity in advance?
To prevent hacking in a company, you should think like a black hat hackers and remove all the existing vulnerabilities that might turn his attention or you can simply hire a team of professional white hat hackers for this purpose. They have a super-skill to understand the actions of black hat hackers, predict them, and prepare a website or any information system, or web application to the possibility of the cyberattack. All the attacks are agreed with a customer before they take place, a team has its plan and purposes, and that is why this kind of hacking is called ethical. If a white hat hacker finds some vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and mistakes in a working of the system, he will not use them for the criminal purposes; they will be removed to make any penetration impossible and prevent hacker’s attack. For a common user who uses information system and website in the usual way such vulnerabilities are invisible, they cannot be traced or noticed without special skills and tools used by white hat hackers. Thus, only professionals are able to evaluate a real thread. The most popular service that is provided by white hat hackers is penetration testing, it is also one of the most effective measures to facilitate safety in a company. Protect against hackers – make sure that your information cannot be reached by anybody who is not authorized for this purpose. During a penetration testing, a white hat hacker makes a common attack on system and website to understand a topical level of protection and to suggest a remedy if there are some security challenges. After this procedure, a system if fully restored and nothing is damaged because of his actions.
Each company has its own approach to protection and method how to prevent hackers from the attack, but making a system harder to hack by software and application is the most common tip that might be used by a company of any level. Hardening can be applied to applications, operation system, servers, database, and networks to make sure that company’s data cannot be reached via Internet. For instance, all the software should be patched appropriately in accordance with the recent updated standards; it will make a process of hacking company more complicated. All the browsers should have firewalls. Encryption of network traffic is the other important element of hardening. In fact, for each company there should be the individual hardening plan that covers all the elements of its information system, and it should be developed considering the topical state of protection and desired outcomes.
The plan how to prevent computer hacking should primarily include a measure to guarantee a physical protection of a laptop, as if a device is stolen, information that is kept on it will become available to the criminals rather soon. In this regard, a laptop or any other device that is used for work should not be left in a car of a worker, especially if it can be easily noticed from the outside. Walking around with a laptop is also a bad idea, as a worker can also suffer is this case. If there is a necessity to leave a laptop, only a colleague or familiar person should be asked to watch after it. A device should be registered and tracked, and every time you leave it, a laptop should be blocked not to allow any other user look at the screen of it and receive any information. Finally, special software and application for encrypting data should always be preferred to storing information in the laptop.
In case of international business trips, there is often a necessity to carry a laptop or tablet and connect it with local spots for Internet. It makes a risk of penetration and cyberattack much higher, especially in case if there were no measures for protection. Pay attention to the preparation and right security measures in international traveling to avoid hacking a company’s computer. First of all, be prepared for anything during a trip. You should use the authorized campus VPN software, application for encrypting data on your laptop. What is also rather important, make sure to backup and encrypt data that are not used during the trip not to allow accessing them. Anti-malware software should be installed in accordance with the recommendation of your system administrator, and all the software should be updated. During the trip, a laptop should not be left alone, no connection to the unknown spots should be conducted, and no links should be opened. Also, if you have not taken a laptop, avoid sharing your credentials publically even if you clear a browser history. After you have returned, make sure to check a laptop and clear it from anything suspicious. These tips are rather simple, but they are able to protect you from major issues not only during the international traveling but also after it.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity is a compulsory aspect of a right company development and functioning at the market, it is needed to make the clients and employees safe from stealing their money and personal data. An appropriate level of cybersecurity can be reached only in case of effective cooperation of professional white hat hackers and company workers. Even the best team of cybersecurity specialists will not help to stop hackers in case if workers fail to perform their basic duties like creating passwords in a right way. At the same time, if all the rules are followed and specialists have done all the needed testing, a company has a full credit to guarantee that clients are protected from any external safety issue. It is the best way to invest into reputation and company’s popularity in future. Preventing hacking implies taking care of company’s customers, and it should not be neglected only because a danger is underestimated by managers or workers.
