More and more we are observing businesses reporting significant losses caused by cyber insider threat actors. These cases often involve former or disgruntled employees using their privileges such as access to company networks, remote login credentials, and administrative permissions to harm companies. Cyber insider threat actors most often are motivated by revenge, but they also conduct attacks to profit financially from stolen information, gain a competitive edge at a new company, engage in extortion, or commit fraud through unauthorized sales and purchases.
To avoid this from happening, you want to ensure employee access to all company network systems. It is important to coordinate employee terminations with the Human Resources and IT departments (including the Help Desk).
Here’s a few tips/tricks to follow:
· Maintain an audit of administrative accounts before and after hiring or contracting personnel and following the departure of personnel.
· Monitor unusual employee network activity, especially in the weeks leading up to an employee leaving the company.
· Monitor suspicious physical security habits of employees, especially the abnormal use of personal devices such as concealing devices in the workspace or using personal devices to photograph sensitive information.
· Change passwords to shared administrator network or remote login credentials regularly. Ensure passwords are changed when an employee with administrative access leaves the company.
· Maintain a robust and tiered backup strategy for computer networks and servers.
· Monitor data uploads to all media, email, or cloud storage outside of the company network.
· Regularly monitor online postings for proprietary products.
· Establish alerts for unusual activities on administrative accounts, and after all network-level access changes.
· Regularly review remote login sessions and unusual activity conducted outside of normal working hours.
· Establish and raise awareness of a reporting mechanism for violations of ethics, brand, or intellectual property rights.
The list above can certainly be a large and vital undertaking. Is it feasible for a small to mid-size business to take on these tasks and the responsibilities necessary to function efficiently?
Consider what an outsourced IT department can do for your SMB.
1. Control and Reduce Costs
When you outsource your organization’s IT functions to an MSP, costs are defined by paying a monthly fee, so you know what your budget is for IT services. Companies can take advantage of their economies of scale, lower cost structures, and learned efficiencies and expertise. When you have your own IT department to fund and run, it can be extremely expensive. Qualified IT professionals must maintain their level of expertise as well as be adequately compensated.
Additionally, MSPs offer cloud-hosted services where you can rent hardware such as servers, and even have them located offsite and monitored on a continual basis, which substantially lowers your total IT investment. All hardware has an “end-of-life” expiration for when its performance deteriorates, then fails and needs to be replaced. Cloud-hosted services allow you to control and predict these costs.
2. Focus on Your Business
Your organization has its core competencies and expertise other than information technology. Every company has limits to resources and by allowing a qualified MSP to take care of your IT will free up your resources to concentrate on the areas that make your business successful and grow.
3. Access to the Most Current Technology
Qualified MSPs bring world-class knowledge and experience to your organization on a continual basis. Having an MSP will help you receive access to new technologies as well as techniques and tools that you currently do not possess. These tools include tried-and-true procedures and processes; documentation; and more structured methodologies.
Additionally, a qualified MSP company tests the engineers they hire, and maintains their training and examinations on a continual basis to keep them up-to-date with the latest technologies. Having your own IT staff limits you to their skill set and expertise but an outsourced IT Department brings you a wide variety of professionals with different skills sets to take care of all your technology needs.
4. 24/7/365 Monitoring of Your IT Environment
It is difficult for an internal IT Department to monitor the technology environment every hour of the day, and every day of the year. Qualified MSPs have the tools and staff to do this and can foresee serious issues with your IT environment. They fix problems before any downtime occurs and will advise you on necessary future upgrades to avoid any future downtime.
MSPs also take care of day-to-day tasks such as software updates and patches, anti-virus updates, data backups, and inventory auditing and control.
5. Minimize Risk
MSPs are responsible for verifying that backups are working and pushing out patches. They take the responsibility of being alerted of unpredictable circumstances such as backup and hardware failures, database corruptions, software crashes, and virus and spyware intrusions. An internal IT staff may not be able to respond and take care of the problem as quickly, leading to extended downtime, putting productivity at risk.
6. Strategic Consulting and Future IT Roadmap Planning
Qualified MSPs advise their clients on their future IT requirements. This is done by evaluating the company’s growth and accompanying IT needs, whether the company plans to move, expand, or enter into new markets.
Technology is constantly changing, and it is difficult to ascertain what a company will need in the future and how those needs will translate into dollars. By partnering with an MSP, uncertainties become more predictable.
7. Increased Productivity
Hiring an MSP will help your organization to lower its costs and focus on its core competencies. A qualified MSP can predict, prevent and quickly respond to serious issues that lead to catastrophic failures and extended downtime. Moreover, you will be using the most current technology that enhances your success and makes you more competitive. An MSP helps you streamline processes and make them more efficient and productive which allows your company to take advantage of opportunities more quickly.
At navitend, we are an excellent fit for organizations between 15 and 500 users who are looking for a trusted business partner with a specialization in IT services. We have clients in the New Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia Area markets. Feel free to contact Patrice at 973.448.0070 ext 312.
Contact us at 973.448.0070