Protecting your data

From: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/indonesia_number_one_attack_source/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

"Indonesia has had the dubious honour of supplanting China as the number one source of attack traffic globally in the second quarter, according to the latest stats from content delivery and security firm Akamai.

The vendor’s State of the Internet report for Q2 found Indonesia accounted for 38 per cent of the world’s attack traffic, almost double the previous quarter’s 21 per cent."

No matter where the primary vector of attack; the fact remains that the globalization of the hacking industry continues.  As companies increasingly rely on data and the free exchange of information over the internet, the sheer abundance of unprotected data will continue to be a tempting way to get rich quick.  The SMB environment is extremely vulnerable.

I cannot count the number of environments I have walked in to which are a BIG RED target due to lax security.  I cannot count the number of SWOT analyses we have done for free for local businesses that never resulted in extra business for us.  Some SMBs see the value in securing, protecting, and backing up one of their primary assets – their data.  Sometimes we add a new client and can get them to where they need to be.  More often than not, the executive I am negotiating with either thinks the price of doing what they need to do is too expensive to implement or choose not to see it as a very important priority.

I pray that said businesses took appropriate security; but I fear many have not.  A different mindset needs to be adopted when you grow a business of, say, 3 people to the size of, say, 25 people.  The amount of data the organization relies on increases exponentially, the number of vulnerable targets increases, and the number of social attack vectors increases.  Hacking proprietary data is becoming more and more profitable, and those organizations who choose not to see the value in protecting that data are treading deep waters.

IT is not the enemy of growth.  To growing companies, companies watching the bottom line, companies who have vulnerabilities to protect; I encourage them to see IT as a partner to grow with and align with, rather than a handicap.  Your IT provider, the right IT provider, can make the transition from a very small business to a small business to a medium-sized business much less dangerous.  If you partner with the right IT organization, the process can even add efficiency to your process.

How long can your organization deal with a major breach?  A breach that results in data loss?  A breach that results in stolen intellectual property?

TRA Consulting, Inc.