Are You Ready for the Things That Go Bump in the Night?

Happy Halloween! Tonight, ghosties and goblins will roam from door to door, collecting candies along the way. This is to be expected. Less expected are the cyberthreats and attacks that darken the doors of modern businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Let’s talk about the things you need to do to keep your business safe, inside and out, every night of the year.

Phishing

Part of the fun of Halloween is dressing up as someone else, but phishing attacks use this activity to trick you to your business’ detriment. A phishing attack commences when an attacker reaches out to their intended victim, posing as a trusted entity. This mask allows the attacker to trick you into handing over exactly what they want, whether that’s a password, network access, or financial details.

This means your entire business must keep a collective eye out for threats, watching for any sign of phishing… mismatched or misspelled domains, for instance, or language that doesn’t fit the presumed sender.

Network Vulnerabilities

“The call is coming from inside the house.” It’s a classic horror story trope, but it can be very real in the case of cybersecurity. One critical question to ask: how did an attacker get in?

Failing to apply patches or update software in a timely manner can let in precisely the types of threats you don’t want in your business. It’s the equivalent of the hapless scream queen not locking a door and letting in the slasher… you hate to blame her, but you have to acknowledge she could have made better choices. Fortunately, you have the opportunity to make the best decisions for your business.

Instead of allowing an attacker to exploit a network vulnerability, you need to proactively monitor everything and actively maintain your business technology to eliminate as many of these vulnerabilities as possible.

Data Loss

Let’s be honest: whether you’re talking about a Halloween movie marathon or pranks played by trick-or-treaters, things are scariest when they’re sudden. Jumpscares, darkness, noises… all of these things are now inexorably linked to scares. They’ve gotten so predictable that people actively prepare themselves for the shock.

When it comes to your data, you need to do the same.

Oftentimes, data loss (or at the very least, the discovery of data loss) is just as much of a sudden scare. Rightly so, too, as data loss can have devastating impacts on a business. Imagine everything your business relies on to function vanishing into the ether.

This is precisely why the proper preparations—namely, data backup and disaster recovery planning—are so essential for modern organizations. By simply planning ahead and establishing a reliable and redundant backup for your business’ data, you can significantly decrease the damage that many disasters can do… making them much less scary, indeed.

Treat Your Business to Our Proactive Technology Support Services

A few scares on Halloween night is one thing, constant stress and worry year-round is quite another. White Mountain IT Services can be in your corner to keep this worry away via our suite of information technology services and support. We’ll proactively keep an eye on your business’ all-important IT, exorcising any issues we find while also helping you plan for a safer and more productive future.

Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to learn more about what we can do for you—no tricks, I promise. Have a happy and safe Halloween!

White Mountain IT

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