How to Be Proactive With Cyber Security
Within the past 60 days, three of our Sage customers have been victims of Ransomware. In all cases, the Ransomware directly ‘attacked’ the Sage databases and brought the operational processing to a halt. Luckily, the customers’ IT teams were able to recover quickly by isolating the source and reinstalling backups.
Though questions remain about the originating source of the attacks, the threats created a valuable learning experience for all about the importance of precaution and safekeeping. The customer’s planning and preparedness minimized the distraction and financial effects.
Aside from these common tips to implement as best practices, two new trends are emerging as defense and recovery options, too.
Cyber Risk Insurance Policies
Per the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Cybersecurity insurance is designed to mitigate losses from a variety of cyber incidents, including data breaches, business interruption, and network damage. The DHS suggests that robust cybersecurity insurance policies could help reduce the number of successful cyber attacks by:
(1) promoting the adoption of preventative measures in return for more coverage
(2) encouraging the implementation of best practices by basing premiums on an insured’s level of self-protection.
Many companies forego available policies, however, citing as rationales the perceived high cost of those policies, confusion about what they cover, and uncertainty that their organizations will suffer a cyber attack.
Cyber Risk coverage is still evolving and standard forms for policies, rates and underwriting coverage are still being defined. Check with your current Insurance agent to find out if it offers Cyber Risk protection policy or choose a stand-alone policy from a reputable source.
Performance App for Sage databases
Since 2015, Sage has been working with Amdo Soft Systems to perfect its b4 Protector application to specifically monitor and protect Sage databases. What began as a partnership for Sage Payroll databases especially, has now begun to spread into Sage ERP database applications. The b4 Protector application checks the security, performance, availability and data consistency of daily operations to ensure data quality and successful processing. Notices of irregularities or non-performance are identified through special b4 Protector sensors and executors then resolved and/or delivered to the IT teams in real-time for immediate action before an end user even recognizes a problem.
The b4 Protector is just now being introduced to the North America Sage customer base. We will continue to monitor its effectiveness and availability to provide updates on the maturing technology but, the application promises to offer another powerful asset to detect security threats to your Sage solutions. It’s important to clarify that b4 Protector is not a virus protection solution alone but, performs best when coupled with an antivirus application strategy.
At RKL eSolutions, we take cyber security threats seriously. Follow our blogs for additional tips, industry trends, and best practices to protect your technology investments and secure your data.
Many companies forego available policies, however, citing as rationales the perceived high cost of those policies, confusion about what they cover, and uncertainty that their organizations will suffer a cyber attack.
Cyber Risk coverage is still evolving and standard forms for policies, rates and underwriting coverage are still being defined. Check with your current Insurance agent to find out if it offers Cyber Risk protection policy or choose a stand-alone policy from a reputable source.
The Solutions We Recommend
Here are just a couple of the technology applications we recommend to our clients here at RKL eSolutions.
Cisco FirePower (At the Perimeter)
In the past, many organizations would purchase multiple security solutions — firewalls, VPN gateways, web filters, and other appliances — from different vendors. This approach increases complexity as the products don't always work well together.
Cisco FirePower take a different approach by consolidating multiple security layers in a single platform. It provides complete and unified management over firewalls, application control, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and advanced malware protection.
Mimecast (Email Scanning)
Mimecast’s security, archiving and continuity cloud services protect business email and deliver comprehensive email risk management in one fully-integrated subscription service.
Like the "single platform" value proposition of Cisco FirePower, Mimecast allows you to avoid managing an array of disjointed point solutions from multiple vendors. And you mitigate single vendor exposure if you have moved your primary email server to the cloud with services like Microsoft Office 365.
Need a CyberSecurity Review?
CyberSecurity reviews are used to identify and assess potential risks, we then work together to prioritize resources, outline the level of impact if things are compromised, measuring against the evaluated likelihood of each vulnerability being exploited. This method provides thorough analysis to determine the appropriate and cost effective ways to mitigate each risk, best suited to fit the organization’s resources and needs.
