Do your employees enjoy the benefits of working from home? If so, you also understand all the concerns that come with their offsite connectivity. Such remote access to your company’s services is a potential security breach. Hackers can take control of these accounts and disrupt all phases of your business. Here are three ways to eliminate account access vulnerability among remote employees.
Add Antivirus Software
Photo Flickr/Mike Cogh
Research suggests 60 percent of companies have suffered data breaches over the last two years. You should provide your employees with computer hardware such as laptops rather than allow them to use their own. This will allow you to have the ability to add software to each system. This strategy attacks the same problem twice to guarantee full protection.
You cannot control the internet surfing behavior of your workers. Some sites include malware that will infect a computer. Then, when the user connects to your servers, the malware will attempt to replicate itself there.
By providing your own hardware, you can guarantee that antivirus protection runs in tandem with the system. Similarly, you can set the software to update automatically. Antivirus programs lose effectiveness if they’re not current with new malware. You shouldn’t trust your employees to update the software. Instead, you can do it yourself before handing the laptops over to your workers. That guarantees they use up-to-date protection.
Add Cloud Software
Even if your company does provide computer hardware with current antivirus software, you still aren’t safe. Hackers are always trying to find new ways to compromise systems. It’s a criminal industry that costs consumers between $375 billion and $575 billion annually. So, you must include many safeguards to protect your business interests.
The best way to shield your servers is through constant vigilance via real-time security protection. One of the most clever cloud-based software solutions is Skyhigh Threat Protection, a third-party account verification service. It’s a perfected automated system that recognizes when your employees are accessing your servers inappropriately. In other words, it can tell if your employee is attempting to read and write to files they don’t need.
Cloud-based threat protection software can also identify if multiple accounts in different locations are using the same log-in, a strong sign of incursion. This type of heuristic programming is functionally a full-time monitor for all your servers. Purchasing this product will save you money in the long run.
Train Employees on Proper Procedures
With the technology side of your servers covered, the last step is to teach employees about the dangers of social engineering. Hackers understand that the easiest way to gain access to your servers is by tricking your employees. They’ll try to con workers with various tactics such as pretending that they’re from the company’s IT department. Then, they’ll ask users to provide their login data and passwords.
Obviously, no one should fall for this tactic, yet some do. You need to train your employees about what your IT department will and won’t do when they contact remote workers. That way, they’ll know never to give their passwords to strangers.
Allowing your employees to work from home is a great way to build loyalty. Still, you have to safeguard your servers against the potential incursions created by remote access. Follow the steps above to protect your business from disaster.
Tens of thousands of Americans whose computers are infected with DNS changer malware will lose Internet service on Monday.
However, the meltdown is preventable by following a few simple steps.
The impending crash will affect those whose computers have been infected with the nasty “Alureon/DNS Changer bot” when the FBI takes down the servers at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, July 9.
To avoid the meltdown, users need to determine if their computer is infected with DNS Changer. Antivirus software will not have offered protection, and Mac computers are also at risk.
To check, users can visit www.dns-ok.us. If you see a red background, your machine has been infected, and while green signals good news, you could still be at risk.
You can also go to www.dcwg.org, run by the DNS Changer Working Group, a collection of experts the FBI recruited to help with the problem.
FBI helps you to check if your computer is at risk of meltdown following DNS changer malware infection
The site includes links to commercial sites that will run a quick check on the computer, and it also lays out detailed instructions if users want to actually check the computer themselves.
Once there, click on “Detect” and scroll to “Manually Checking if your DNS server have been Changed”. Click on the option for your system and follow the step-by-step guide.
Your Internet service provider might also be able to help if you think your computer could have been affected.
Scroll to the bottom of www.dcwg.org/detect to see a list of the pages set up by providers for users.
If you discover that your computer has been infected, you can follow the steps at www.dcwg.org/fix. It is recommended to back up your files.
The cause of the crash is a piece of software, which was designed to redirect you from trusted websites to other sites in a bid to steal personal information and which found its way onto hundreds of thousands of computers last year.
When the attack was noticed, the FBI took the unusual step of setting up a “safety-net”, routing infected machines through their server to stop the “spoof” attacks.
These servers will be taken down on 12:01 a.m. on Monday, July 9, and when this happens, people still infected are likely to lose their internet connection without warning.
The warnings about the problem have been splashed across Facebook and Google. Internet service providers have sent notices, and the FBI has set up its special website.
Despite repeated alerts, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April.
Of those still infected, the FBI believes that about 64,000 are in the United States.
Users whose computers are still infected on Monday will lose their ability to go online, and they will have to call their service providers for help deleting the malware and reconnecting to the Internet.
According to Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent, many Internet providers are ready for the problem and have plans to try to help their customers.
Tom Grasso said other Internet providers may come up with technical solutions that they will put in place on Monday that will either correct the problem or provide information to customers.
If the Internet providers correct the server problem, the Internet will work, but the malware will remain on victims’ computers and could pose future problems.
In addition to individual computer owners, about 50 Fortune 500 companies are still infected, Tom Grasso said.
The simple steps to stay safe
If you are worried about the impending meltdown, follow these steps:
1) Visit this FBI-approved site – http://www.dns-ok.us – and see if you get an “all-clear” green background or an “at risk” red background.
2) If you have a red background, visit http://www.dcwg.org/fix which lists free virus scanner and removal software.
Our recommendations from the free range are Microsoft Windows Defender and Avira.
For more information, visit here: http://www.dcwg.org/detect/
