Tag: cyber security measure

IT Consultants in Los Angeles Can Help Provide You Proper Security Incentive

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IT Consultants in Los Angeles Can Help Provide You Proper Security Incentive

IT consultants in Los Angeles can do little to help your business secure itself if you don’t have motivation. Motivation is one reason cybercriminals currently dominate the IT world. Consider WannaCry, a North Korean attack which affected businesses in 150+ countries. North Korea has incentive to succeed, and through WannaCry, they certainly managed to net themselves some assets via bitcoin ransom. Consider also that cybercrime is expected to top $6 trillion by 2021.

Those who steal through hacking means are motivated by profit. To them, stealing from you represents their core industry–and they’re making bank. If you’re going to successfully safeguard yourself, you must rival their enthusiasm in terms of protection. Following are three “choke points” you can focus on to help you reduce vulnerability. These include:

  • An offensive defensive strategy
  • Doing vs. planning
  • Those who plan and those who implement

An Offensive Defensive Strategy

IT consultants in Los Angeles can help you go on the offense with your defense. As they say: the best defense is a good offense. What does that look like in terms of technology? Well, proactive monitoring support solutions continuously keep an eye on your network to ensure no underhanded, anomalous activity is going on. The latest patches are always applied–patching is all that was necessary to prevent WannaCry. If you’ve got patches applied as automatically as you can apply them, this will help save you a lot of trouble. Additionally, you want the latest firewall protections, the latest antivirus and anti-malware protocols, and the latest BDR solutions utilizing the cloud. These things are all “offensively” defensive.

Doing vs. Planning

Now it’s easy to plan for all of these things, but putting your plans into action is another thing entirely. It’s not enough to design the best plan in the world, it must be realistically and affordably implemented. Working with the right MSP can help you determine what is viable, what isn’t, implementation strategy, and how to maintain your defensive planning via successful implementation going forward.

Those Who Plan and Those Who Implement

Now there’s often a disparity between security planners who are looking at the organization as a whole and implementation personnel who are tasked with putting things together in a tangible sense. The right MSP can help you justify these two parties together. Sometimes, those who plan for security implementation across the entire organization aren’t aware of the time fallout which occurs from certain measures, like continuously reset passwords.

There is such a thing as going “too far”. A balance is necessary. Those who implement security should be classified as the entire organization— from custodians to temps, to managers, to CEOs, and everyone in between. Accordingly, this requires education. The right MSP can help train your organization pertaining to the best practices regarding security. When everyone is on the same page, then security plans from on high will have a greater likelihood of successful implementation.

Secure Operations

Advanced Networks have one of the best IT consultants in Los Angeles that can help your security solution go on the offensive, which will give you better defense than that which is sourced without informed planning. Contact us now for the latest defensive solutions in terms of IT and help your business remain operable despite driven cybercriminal aggressors.

Effective Cyber Security IT Services for Your Los Angeles SMB

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IT services providers in Los Angeles can save you over $24k a year just by helping to prevent one concerted cybercriminal intrusion. Averaged data recovery costs for SMBs are usually between $36k and $50k, depending. If you are able to attain BDR and/or DRaaS through the right IT solution, you can avoid such expenses. If you are paying $12k a year to save you from $36k to $50k in losses, that is a saving of at minimum, $24k annually.

Over the course of five years, statistically, having the right kind of cyber security solution will definitely save you money. It is not just that the likelihood of being targeted compounds the longer you operate without protection. It is that recovering from even a small cyberattack can be difficult, or impossible. Six out of ten SMBs sustaining such attacks without protection are out of business within six months. When you put on top of that the fact that 50% of cyberattacks target small businesses, the problem becomes especially affecting.

So, what do you do? You find cyber security solutions that are comprehensive and continue to develop as the businesses offering them expand. Several key cyber security options you want to look for include:

  • BDR/DRaaS
  • Antivirus/anti-malware software
  • Helpdesk support
  • Proactive monitoring
  • Employee education solutions

BDR/DRaaS

IT services providers in Los Angeles can provide you Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) options which operate from redundancy and continuous backup via cloud computing support. DRaaS refers to Disaster Recovery as a Service. This is an all-encompassing solution, which includes monitoring and may even include things like database mirroring. Cloud computing storage is unlimited, and top-tier packages can make it so that you can backup systems every time some aspect of the network is altered.

Antivirus/Anti-Malware Software

You need software solutions designed to rebuff cybercriminal hack programs like malware, adware, spyware, and perhaps most importantly, ransomware. These are not fully comprehensive but operating without them is catastrophic.

Helpdesk Support

The right helpdesk will be available 24/7/365, and it is staffed with professionals who solve your problems swiftly and do not put you on hold. Additionally, they will resolve 70% to 80% of tier-one issues, saving you time, money, and stressful hassle.

Proactive Monitoring

You are looking for proactive services, not reactive ones. Reactive services are going to miss things. Proactive services will notice anomalous activity, identify it, and act should such a thing become necessary. This will maintain systems and rebuff cybercriminal attacks.

Employee Education Solutions

As it turns out, a good number of compromising situations are going to develop from internal errors made by your own employees. The best way around this is proper education solutions. The right MSP should be able to help you design a system of best practices to codify into a standard operating procedure for your business. Especially in terms of web-usage, caution is fundamentally necessary.

Securing Operations

IT services in Los Angeles through Advanced Networks can help educate your employees, proactively monitor your operations, provide helpdesk support around the clock, install the latest antivirus protocols, and get you back online nigh-instantaneously when all else fails through BDR/DRaaS. If you have not upgraded operational security yet, feel free to contact us and explore our options.

Taking Precautionary Measures Against Hackers with the Help of IT Consultants in Los Angeles

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IT consultants in Los Angeles are always sharing news about hackers targeting companies. Hacking is not something new, and unfortunately, it can happen to any business whether big or small. The question of concern should be whether you are prepared to deal with the situation when it happens.

As mentioned above, hacking can happen to any organizations. Some businesses may think that they are safe because they have put certain precautionary measures. Taking measures is simply a layer of security that is meant to lessen the impact when you are hacked. Look at the following examples of big corporations that were hacked:

Honda

Honda was hit in 2010 whereby the hackers managed to access VINs, email addresses, and over two million names of customers. This incident would have led to the hackers doing phishing attacks on their customers to get more information. However, they went for a third-party company that sent welcome emails to new Honda owners. This is proof enough that even as you protect your company, you should ensure that your suppliers and any third-party company that works for you are protected, as well.

Microsoft

You could be mistaken to think that Microsoft, being a big corporation that manufactures software and PCs, cannot be hacked. Recently, their employees became victims of social media and email phishing attacks. The emails requesting for confidential information, of course, looked as if they were coming from a credible source. You could think that, given the nature of their business, they are the last people to be hacked, yet it happened. This is a lesson that you can be hacked for any reason. IT consultants in Los Angeles can guide you on how to be prepared.

Foxconn

Foxconn is a Chinese corporation that makes electronic parts for Apple. A hacker group known as SwaggSec hacked into their systems and got hold of all the usernames and passwords belonging to the company. They took advantage of an unpatched Internet Explorer. This is a lesson that as you secure the network of your company, you should ensure that the internal security is secured, as well.

If hackers can take time to hack the system of a big corporation with tight security measures, then that means that smaller businesses are an easier target that cannot be spared.

To be safer, collaborate with IT consultants in Los Angeles to help you safeguard your business. Advanced Networks is a managed services provider that can help you tighten your security measures. Contact us now and let us help you safeguard your business against cybercriminals.