by Ralph Eck | Mar 06, 2014
The recent Target security breach has gotten everyone’s attention and raised many questions about how such a thing could happen. Security breaches among major retailers are not completely uncommon, but having 40 million debit and credit cards accounts stolen (along with personal information for up to 110 million shoppers) is off the charts and points to an epic failure in the system. In the case of Target, subsequent investigations are showing that the point of failure came through a stolen identity from a vendor that was servicing Target and had access to the company’s database. While the vendor in question did not handle the store’s credit or debit payment processing, the stolen credentials gave hacker’s access to Target’s network. To help illustrate this scenario, one security official draws the analogy between a network and a house. There may be several doors, each with a different lock. All it takes is for one key to get stolen for a perpetrator to gain entry. Once inside, he can stealthily move between rooms and hide to avoid detection.
Securing Your Infrastructure
So again the central question and concern the Target breach has raised for many small businesses can be expressed as follows: if a major retail giant with enormous resources experienced such a massive breach, what chance do we possibly have to stand against hackers and other cybercriminals? Actually, the Target incident is a teachable moment in the world of cybersecurity and points to a number of deliberate steps that any small business owner can take to protect valuable company assets.
So what are some practical measures your company can start to take today to secure its infrastructure? Below we’ve outlined a set of best practices that will help ensure your computers, data assets, and network are given maximum protection against security vulnerabilities posed by malware, spam, and viruses.
In the next part of this series we’ll shift the focus from protecting your company infrastructure to actual hacking prevention methods that mitigate the risks to your business posed by cyber criminals. Stay tuned!
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