Author: itwadmin-security

It’s no secret the past year has changed the nature of business forever. Organizations in every industry, whether B2B or B2C, had to rethink business processes due to social distancing laws and changing client behavior. In fact, IDC research from late 2020 suggests that up to 5 years of work and investment into tech innovation and digital transformation took place in less than 9 months.

2020 saw the reimagining of billing and payment workflows, document approvals and signatures, and client engagement methods. The elimination of physical processes transformed insurance, banking, and retail. Visiting a branch or store in person is now all but obsolete.

We all long to socialize and shop in person for certain things, like clothing. However, today’s digital-first world of curbside pickups, online engagement, and self-service isn’t going away. Remote working, remote collaboration and digital-first engagement are the new standard.

In 2021, business owners waiting for the world to “return a pre-pandemic normal” will either be disappointed or out of business. Canadian technology leaders must embrace a digital-first, security-first mindset towards their information and technology ecosystem.

The arrival of the “new normal” does not mean the transformation will be easy. This new year may bring a time of reflection, hope, and opportunity, but many companies still struggle to play “catch up” as the effects of these changes take hold. As we look forward, here are three areas of permanent digital transformation that businesses must be aware of: security first in everything, digital collaboration tools, and disaster recovery and backups.

Security First in Every Digital Transformation

Unfortunately, cybercriminals often exploit times of crisis to find the opportunity for the most gain. Experts now estimate that the financial impact of cybercrime has passed the illegal drug trade.

2020 saw data breaches and cybercrime incidents skyrocket across every industry. As Canadian businesses struggled to adjust, their vulnerability increased tremendously.  Instead of creating and storing data within a safe office network, companies now had to deal with a distributed, mostly untrained workforce taking their devices home. This mixing of personal and professional activities online, coupled with the stress of achieving a pandemic work life balance, presented a security challenge never before seen in business.

According to Kaspersky, up to 75% of Canadian workers received no security-related training on managing the increased risks of working remotely at home.

If you haven’t already, now is the time to evaluate your organization’s security posture and plan for this as a permanent part of your operations. Increased investment in advanced endpoint protection (anti-malware and threat detection tools) and an ongoing commitment to security education is essential.  You need to take a security-first approach to all technology purchasing and architecture decisions, with widespread remote work and increasing digital-first engagement with your clients at the heart of all your planning in 2021 and beyond.

Digital Collaboration Tools

Sure, we are all getting “Zoom fatigue” every week, but make no mistake. Digital-first engagement for internal collaboration and client interactions is not going away. Ever.

Whether you’re creating Zoom accounts or using Microsoft Teams features for your staff, it’s essential to ensure they interact smoothly (and securely) with your legacy communication tools and TELCO subscriptions. If your old phone system doesn’t work with your new solutions or doesn’t provide the protection you need, it might be time for an upgrade to a cloud-based VOIP solution.

Technology leaders must be in sync with finance this year to take a hard look at communication and collaboration spending. There are cost savings and budget stability to be had with today’s cloud-based collaboration and managed voice solutions from your IT provider. Now is the time to figure out the best way forward for your phone system, internet connectivity, and video conferencing tools.

Disaster Recovery & Backups:

2020 taught us that, as business leaders, it’s impossible to anticipate every disaster. However, we can certainly plan for business disruptions and invest in impact mitigation: whether caused by natural disasters, cybersecurity incidents, or good old-fashioned human error. The pandemic necessitated billions of dollars in new technological investments like remote access, cloud services, and productivity tools.

But now, as digital transformation sets in and you move past survival, your team needs to scrutinize your ecosystem with an eye to disaster recovery and data backups. What do your architecture and workflow look like? Have you updated your business continuity plans?  With so many Canadians leveraging cloud-based productivity tools, more and more data is getting created outside your traditional network.  Are you backing up that data appropriately?

The need for good business continuity and disaster recovery plans has never been so clear. There’s no better time than now to look back at the changes and update your plans, procedures, and tools accordingly.

Redefine Your New Normal

What was done out of necessity to secure remote work, digital collaboration, and client engagement must now be accepted as the ‘new normal’ moving forward.

In 2021, it’s time to ensure you haven’t accumulated too much “technical debt” in the 2020 “survival scramble.”  Examine the changes you made and the new vulnerabilities you face through the lens of acceptance: THIS is now the new normal.  We aren’t going back to the way things were before.

Need help in navigating this landscape? Let us be the guide to your company’s new normal. Check out these Business Continuity and Remote Work Solutions we curated to help you thrive in the “new normal.”

Only 5 days in 2018 and the business world is in full panic mode as two massive security flaws, Meltdown and Spectre, emerge from the ransomware ashes of 2017. While last year’s ransomware threats like Locky, WannaCry, and Petya and multiple high profile data breaches put a mighty scare into IT leaders worldwide, Meltdown and Spectre are poised to be one of the most dangerous security flaws of all time.

Meltdown and Spectre are two newly discovered security vulnerabilities that affect nearly every computer processor made in the past 20 years, meaning that desktops, laptops, phones, and Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices are all at significant risk of allowing hackers to access private data such as passwords and banking information.

Microsoft, Intel, Google, HP, Apple, Lenovo and other major technology providers are scrambling to issue security fixes as quickly as possible, while IT leaders hurry to test them and get them working. While updating your systems is a common security best practice, businesses that utilize Manage Service Providers (MSPs) stand at an advantage when it comes to battling these types of threats. Here’s why:

It’s Someone Else’s Problem

If you use an MSP to manage your infrastructure and devices, then chances are they have been toiling away furiously to get patches tested and installed quickly, while also making sure that these new patches do not significantly affect performance for your systems…meaning that you don’t have to. Using an MSP allows you to continue focusing on your business plan while a trained security team tackles these emerging threats.

You Have a Central Point of Contact, Not Five or Six

Your technology infrastructure has a lot of moving parts, and many of these parts involve several different vendors. Instead of waiting on hold with countless vendor support teams, IT Managers only need to contact their MSP’s support team or Account Manager to find out what’s going on with fixes for Meltdown and Spectre. Most MSPs will have specialized team members tackling their individual areas of expertise, which can significantly speed up the process.

Dedicated Security Teams for Handling Dedicated Security Issues

For most small to medium sized businesses, having a dedicated Information Security employee is not feasible. With an Managed Services Provider, you get access to individuals with years of security experience, who will be able to guide you in the right direction.

Meltdown and Spectre may be the first major threats of 2018, but they definitely won’t be the last. Make sure you have a proper plan in place to keep your systems updated regularly. It’s one of the main ways to keep your information secure and your business safe.

It’s all over the news; a global outbreak of advanced ransomware affecting Microsoft Operating Systems. The virus known as WannaCry, or Wanna Decryptor has been responsible for over 300,000 attacks in over 150 countries.  To make matters worse, as systems get protected against the original threat, now there are copycat pieces of malware popping up all over the place.  This is the character of tomorrow’s threat landscape.  Global incidents like this underscore the tremendous importance of developing and maintaining an ongoing security strategy for your business.

Attacks like this usually enter an organization through email as an infected attachment, masquerading as something legitimate, which is accidentally executed by the user.

Ransomware viruses like this one are particularly damaging because they behave like a worm – after infecting and locking down one device, they continue to scan networks looking for more vulnerabilities (servers, desktops etc…) until they are stopped.

Keeping Your Business Safe from Ransomware

Effective security protection against complex attacks needs to be a multi-layered approach. The following controls—in combination—will offer the maximum protection for your business from this type of attack:

Perimeter Firewalls: A strong perimeter firewall or unified threat management appliance is the primary means of preventing malware and viruses from infecting your systems. Make sure your systems are being protected at the perimeter.
Email Security & Filtering: Filtering malicious attachments and executables blocks many of these attacks before they reach your users.  Investing in good email security and content filtering is an important part of a comprehensive strategy.
User Awareness: Users must be aware of malicious attachments and you should provide regular reminders about how to identify suspicious email.  User awareness training will help your people feel part of the security strategy.
Regular Patching: Your IT team or MSP must maintain a rigorous patching and upgrade schedule to ensure your systems are up to date, tested, and protected against known exploits.
Backups: In the event of a ransomware infection, the reality is that the most effective way of recovering data is to restore from a secure backup. Your business needs a secure, cloud based backup solution to protect against data loss and ransomware.

Should You Pay the Ransom?

It’s important to realize that if you have a computer that is infected, paying the ransom is no guarantee that you will get your get files back.  Having current and secure backups of your PCs and servers is an important step to protecting your company and your users from these kinds of invasive ransomware viruses.

Simple Instructions for End Users

Here are some simple tips and reminders that you can share with your organization to help protect against the growing number of ransomware and phishing scams.

DO NOT – open attachments you were not expecting
DO NOT – enable macros when prompted
DO NOT – click on unknown links in email
DO NOT – send your credentials (your username and password) to anyone
DO NOT – reply to any unknown messages

DO – examine the sender (name and email address) of all emails critically
DO – examine all links and attachments carefully for unusual characteristics
DO – confirm with senders if emails from known users are unexpected or unusual
DO – report suspicious emails to IT administrators

Contact us if you’ve got questions about how you can better protect your organization.