Are you taking all the precautions?

At Abtrac we are super-serious about data security. We should all be.

We’ve all heard of viruses and malware. We often read about people who have been unwittingly scammed. Some of you might have been hit with ransomware or other calamities. We all know about multi-factor authentication.

But still, too many of us are pretty relaxed about online security. Indeed business surveys show CFOs and other management are more concerned about IT cost than IT security.

How often do you think a bot tries to hack into your business web site or your home computer? The answer may scare you and surprise you.

How often do you think it happens? The answer is continually and repetitively, throughout the day, every day for as long as the machine is turned on.

It depends on how long you’re on line at home and of course the sites you’re visiting, where you click and other things. At work it’s the same for your local machine albeit with network security that should be better than at home. And there’s also your web site. Bots hitting that depend on a site’s popularity, how often it flags up in searches, PPC etc. plus the type of business and other factors.

But an average small business web site will have dozens of penetration attempts every day. Fifty to somewhere in the hundreds is the norm.

A bank may have millions or indeed billions of attempts in one day. Bots running through millions of combinations and permutations trying to find your credentials. They’re random, but they occasionally work.

Imagine millions of monkeys randomly banging away on millions of keyboards. Statistics tells us one of those monkeys will accidentally knock out a deeply meaningful sequence of words or even a whole Shakespearean sonnet, albeit after maybe hundreds of years of trying. It will be a pretty old monkey by then. But one of them might fluke it tomorrow. (Don’t tell animal welfare. This is just imaginary!)

It’s no different with bots hitting your web site, your internal IT environment at work, or from something you’ve clicked on your home computer. Bots aren’t as smart as monkeys. But they never sleep.

So make sure you’re 110% firewalled and up to date antivirus etc. Use your web host’s protection as well. Abtrac is behind Microsoft’s security, ranking as high as we can get. AWS and other players have comparable defences.

You could go to the next step and hire someone to try to crack into your system or your web site. Don’t choose some “Ethical Hacker” from the other side of the world. Find a well-known and well referenced local penetration tester.

If possible enable logging and monitoring. Obviously run backups. Keep up to date with all recommended updates. Don’t click on suspicious looking emails. Duh! It sounds common sense but entire businesses have been brought to their knees because of one email that one person opens without thinking. There are probably several instances you can recall that have been made public and many others kept quiet.

And please turn on multi-factor authentication on every piece of software you use, including Abtrac. This one simple step on its own will reduce current penetration attempts by 90%. Do it!

Abtrac is serious about the security of your data. This blog is to get you thinking about how you use Abtrac, and all other online web sites and programs.

If you have any questions about Abtrac security, go to How secure is the data in AbtracOnLine? – Abtrac Support or email or call us.

We will be pleased to respond, as always.