Can your IT support company protect against data breaches? It’s one of the most important questions a business owner can ask in today’s threat landscape — and the answer can make or break your business. November started off with a great opportunity for businesses to learn more about data security, IT security, and protecting their networks from hackers. This was thanks to ThrottleNet’s very own Cybersecurity Manager, Dustin Leefers, who appeared on The Dave Glover Show on KMOX radio to talk about how ethical white hat hackers can help businesses protect against data breaches. Below you can read an overview of their conversation, along with practical ways to judge whether your current provider truly has your back.
How Can Ethical Hackers Promote a Business’s IT and Data Security?
Dustin started out by explaining how businesses can use ethical white hat hackers to improve the IT and data security of their networks. For clarification, white hat hackers perform security assessments to strengthen a company’s defenses, while black hat hackers attempt to gain unauthorized access to an IT network and pose a security threat.
You can hire an ethical white hat hacking team to run a number of simulations in which they try to penetrate your network using the latest techniques. This real-world test of your network’s cybersecurity reveals whether weaknesses exist and what you can do about them. If you want to know how well your IT support company can protect against data breaches, commissioning a penetration test is one of the clearest ways to find out. A compromised network can lead to loss of sensitive company information, ransom demands, and much more — including confidential data traveling to the dark web.
Why Might a Business’s Information Be on the Dark Web?
The dark web is where hackers communicate on forums to share company information they’ve acquired. It’s also where many of them advertise their hacking services. If you suffer a serious IT security data breach where sensitive company information is stolen, that data can be held for ransom with the threat of being released on these forums, or sold as part of a black hat hacker’s services to someone else. A capable IT support company can protect against data breaches partly by monitoring the dark web for your exposed credentials before criminals can exploit them.
What Considerations Help Businesses Improve Internal IT Security?
In the interview, Dustin outlines that businesses should implement multi-layered approaches to IT security. This includes using updated antivirus, firewalls, DNS filtering, dark web monitoring, and email filtering. Because hackers only need a single point of entry to gain access to a network, it’s important that your IT department has the right practices in place and is prepared to take action the moment a red flag is raised. Managed IT services are often a great option for businesses that can’t justify employing a full in-house IT team — and a strong managed provider is exactly how many organizations ensure their IT support company can protect against data breaches around the clock.
Additional considerations to improve a business’s security include:
- Adequate employee training
- Random phishing drills
- Patch management
- Planning for existing cybersecurity threats
- Staying IT compliant
- Working with an IT consultant
- Using up-to-date, quality IT hardware
- Regularly backing up data
- Restricting access to information to only those who require it
When you evaluate whether an IT support company can protect against data breaches, ask how many of these layers they actively manage on your behalf — not just which ones they recommend.
How Important Is It for Businesses to Know Where Their Information Is?
Whether your business runs its own on-site servers or uses a data center’s hosting services, knowing exactly what data you have and where it lives makes data security and IT security far easier. The Federal Trade Commission outlines five tips that can help:
- Take stock of all personal information you have stored.
- Scale down and keep only what you need.
- Lock it by protecting all company information with IT and data security practices.
- Pitch it and properly dispose of information that’s no longer needed.
- Plan ahead by creating a response plan for possible security threats.
A provider that helps you map and minimize your data footprint demonstrates, in practical terms, that your IT support company can protect against data breaches before they ever happen.
The Bottom Line
The best way to confirm that your IT support company can protect against data breaches is to look for proof: regular penetration testing, layered defenses, dark web monitoring, employee training, and a documented incident response plan. If your current provider can’t speak to these, it may be time to reassess.
Contact ThrottleNet today to learn how to secure your business’s information. For Dustin Leefers’ full interview on The Dave Glover Show, click here.
