Cappuccino Chat - Episode 25 - The Best Way To Stop Cyber Threats

welcome back to the channel this time we're talking about the one thing you can do to guarantee no cyber breaches but i also guarantee you won't do it so what am i talking about when i say the one thing you can do to completely stop cyber breaches but i know you won't do it well that is to not be on the internet at all but in today's world no business or even person could really be that disconnected from the internet that we completely unplug too much of our lives and of our businesses are connected to the internet that doesn't mean we don't need to do that or somehow limit the internet so that's really what we're going to be talking about today is the proper use of your firewall web filtering and some other technologies that your it provider has for you to limit your risk when visiting the internet so if we thought about your business there's probably a handful of people that really don't need to get on the internet now i'm not talking about email right so everybody needs email but that's totally different than getting on the internet so if you're using office 365 or some other kind of hosted email i'm not talking about eliminating that although most viruses and some of the ransomware and stuff are still delivered primarily via email but that's not what i'm saying i'm saying let's limit their internet usage so they can't go to any website that they need to or they want to so let's think about this i'm sure there's somebody again in there that you know maybe in your finance department yeah they need to get to your payroll company uh hr information stuff like that for different different websites but do they need to be able to go anywhere on the internet probably not and if they don't then there's probably other your normal employees that don't need to go just anywhere on the internet they may have a handful of websites that you may need access to you know you get your office supplies from staples okay perfect we've got to make sure everybody can get the staples but does everybody in the business need able to get to facebook and linkedin probably not at least not from your business network side now i'm not talking about limiting people's access to because people have gotten accustomed to using the guest wireless in businesses to browse the internet and you take that away you know it's going to cause issues in your business i'm not talking about that that's that's kind of a different network i'm talking about your standard desktop pc standard laptops that are using being used strictly for your business so again now if you've got somebody in your company that does your marketing and they need to post and do things on then of course by all means give them that access but that's probably not everybody in the company right so again if we can limit the amount of websites that users ie and even computers can get access to we greatly reduce the risk of possible breach for instance a lot of the breaches now when they become persistent or they get access to your computer and they just kind of watch in the background we call that getting persistence getting a foothold they're basically scanning your computer for anything usable personal information information on your clients friends credit card information financials anything they can use for identity theft or just raw data espionage right so like the big sony hack they stole the movie before it came out those kinds of things so you may not think your data is all that valuable but when they can piecemeal out all your clients data to different identity theft rings uh any credit card information you gather and they can do fake credit cards and stuff like that your data is a lot more valuable than you think it is and if you're in health care in any way shape or form that data is even more valuable so when i say healthcare that includes some of those other additional professional services that maybe serve the health care industry and can get access to that same data so if you're using a billing company or a cpa firm to do your billing and finances and they could run across that phi that protected health information you want to make sure things are good so again limit the risk how could we think about this from an everyday standpoint so i've been thinking about that and i've come up with a couple different ideas but primarily think of it like your house so if we wanted to secure your house we've got doors and windows we have to deal with so the less doors and windows the less locks we need to buy the net the less alarm sensors we need to purchase so on and so forth so you would move your valuables uh closer in or something with less access so your kids rooms right we don't want our kids to come into any kind of danger so there's probably one window in their bedroom and there's probably one door to their bedroom well now we only have to deal with two access points to protect our children right so that's great versus the entire house where we've got front door back door numerous windows the garage door so on and so forth right so again if we can limit that down and only have to protect the couple that we need to we can provide much better much stronger much safer protection for that bedroom in this instance right for that bedroom door and that bedroom window than we can for the entire house so it's going to be much easier for us to apply a narrowed focus like that than it is across everything same thing that i'm talking about for your website browsing and access to if we limit where your computers can go to even if you were to get breached and they want to steal that data they have to somehow offload it off of your computer onto their network well if we're blocking everything except for staples and your payroll company odds are they're not going to try to upload your data to one of those two right so you've now eliminated that risk as far as them actually getting the data off you haven't eliminated the risk of getting them persistence there's other tools we can talk about to give you that protection but we've limited the ability for that computer in order to go outbound and get access to different sites and services most people don't even know what ftp is again if we limit that outbound and don't allow it nobody can use it to get data out of your system so when it comes to how you can protect yourself from these different cyber breaches the best thing you can do is get rid of the internet but we can't do that today so again let's limit the amount of internet that our employees can get to now use the owner if you want to be able to have unrestricted access to everything totally understand but just realize when we make those big gaping holes in your security it's like buying a security system for your house and then you saying i'm not going to lock my doors and windows and as a matter of fact my bedroom window is going to always be open because i like the fresh air at that point what was the point in getting the security system to begin with i hope you found this valuable like always if you have any questions please reach out give us a call at the office 760-770-5200 you