Just only a couple of years ago it was common to hear on the news of a company being breached by some hackers or their data being hit by malicious viruses. Such events would usually culminate in major fines, fees, litigation and loss of employment.
Nowadays such breaches are far more commonplace and can have less impact on a company's public brand. With recent data breaches of major corporations, it seems that their standard modus operandi is to offer an acknowledgement of the breach occurring and then provide consumers with credit monitoring for a specific period of time. Seemingly gone are all the class action litigation that would be so costly for these companies, in addition to the damage caused by the data breach itself. We seem to just accept it as a part of life.
Although major corporations may now deal with this situation in a public posture such as this, the day-to-day operations of any company that has experienced such an invasive attack are surely changed and transformed in order to prevent future attacks. For example, some major banks that have experienced data breaches now prevent their employees from entering the workplace with their mobile phones. After all, in today's world, a mobile phone is a very powerful (albeit little) computer.
These commonplace computers in our everyday lives (i.e., your mobile phone) can be major tools used by hackers or individuals looking to penetrate a company's computing operations. The breach of a company’s security via an employee’s mobile phone (or mobile phone of another individual physically within a business’ workplace) may be either intentional or inadvertent. It is commonplace for seemingly harmless apps to have ‘hidden’ code that either listens in, take photographs or perform other activities without the mobile phone owner ever even knowing these activities are occurring.
The landscape of the current attacks, ransomware and other malicious software changes by the day. Any business operation whether small, medium or large has to stay vigilante against those looking to do wrong and harm their business operations. This means staying up to date on current virus protections, auditing any external infiltration points on a regular basis and working with security industry experts to help put the best footing forward.
Knowing that any potential threats are not only external, but potentially internal as well, is a key perspective to have. Then, following the general guidelines discussed here will be a very positive step in the direction of safe and secure computing operations. Finally, when you have successfully secured your computer environment and thoroughly protected it from any and all possible threats, go back to ‘Step 1’ and repeat the process all over again because the next round of potentially harmful stuff is already trying to cause havoc to your operations. Security has to be planned for and is a never ending activity for a successful business.