Hacking has become a common practice for cybercriminals. With enough time and effort put into penetrating an organization’s security, hackers are capable of holding the company’s data hostage until they receive their ransom. It doesn’t matter if it is financially beneficial to pay off the hacker or not; being hacked puts more at risk than just your IT.
Ransomware is Expensive
Based on industry standards, the average cost to an organization that has been hacked due to ransomware averages $ 1.8 million. This can include but is not limited to; lost revenue, having to pay for cleanup and overtime IT service costs, litigation fees, reputational damage, among others. Being hacked puts your business at a significant loss. This is why it is crucial to implement a managed IT service provider to reduce your organization’s risk of being hacked.
Ransomware Victims
Ransomware targets all walks of life, from small businesses to large corporations, including hospitals and schools to even the police department. In early 2017, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was held hostage for about $ 17 000. The hospital paid the ransom, but it was not until ten days after the attack that their IT company recovered their data. One incident like this can create a snowball effect.
Although ransomware is expensive, there are ways companies can protect themselves from being hacked. Hackers are capable of penetrating the most secure servers with enough patience and time. This is why companies need managed IT services to reduce their risk.
Train Your Employees to Recognize Hackers/Scammers (Email Phishing)
- Train them to use strong passwords that they don’t use for other sites.
- Teach employees to:
- look out for signs of phishing, such as a suspicious link/email.
- be careful about which websites they visit and type in information on.
- important files and to have a system in place for this.
- Train them to think before clicking on suspicious emails or links.
- Train them to check the source of the email, and make sure it is not a spoofed (fake) email.
- Teach employees to never provide passwords, account numbers/usernames, or any other sensitive information through an email.
How Hackers Hack into Organizations Systems
During a penetration attempt, a hacker would typically follow a set of phases:
Surveillance
The first step is scanning, which involves searching for known security vulnerabilities or weak points in the system by running specific tools and scripts. This step is significant because it gives the hacker an overview of what he can gain access to by exploiting a vulnerability.
Privilege escalation
The next step is privilege escalation, which involves leveraging any security vulnerabilities found during the previous stages so that steps can be taken from within the system to gain additional privileges. Once these have been achieved, it moves on to maintaining access or persistence, where an attacker would set up a backdoor for future use.
Hire Cybersecurity/IT Professionals to Manage Your IT
The best way to avoid being hacked is through proper IT Services managed by a managed service provider (MSP). Companies can outsource their IT management to an MSP with managed IT services, which provides companies with the tools and resources to manage their own IT department.
A managed service provider (MSP) offers businesses a bundle of products and services ordered on the client’s behalf. The managed service provider becomes accountable for delivering these services, managing associated risks, and reducing costs. This allows a business to focus on what is essential, their core competencies.
The managed IT services include:
- asset management,
- device configuration and maintenance,
- data protection,
- security monitoring and reporting,
- disaster recovery planning assistance,
- IT support desk assistance (CPU),
- ongoing performance reporting, software usage reporting, and network monitoring.
These managed IT services give your company peace of mind knowing that your managed service provider has it covered.