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Is your data safe?

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The basics of data protection from monitoring to backup and recovery

You’re at work getting things done when it happens. Your computer crashes and everything you were working on is gone. How long does it take to recover that data before you can get back to work? Or can it even be recovered at all?

Data is what keeps business moving which makes this scenario incredibly scary yet it is repeated day after day, year after year. Despite the fact that data is a business’s most valuable asset, this disaster situation and others like it keep playing out. That’s where proper data monitoring, backup, and recovery come in to help modern business.

Data Monitoring
A crucial component of business is to have data monitoring in place. This allows your data to be regularly checked against quality control rules to ensure data meets or exceeds established standards for formatting, consistency, and usage. With data monitoring, data is quality checked as it is created and used.

How It Works
Every piece of information serves a purpose. Data monitoring is a proactive approach to checking and evaluating data to certify that it meets quality standards and achieves its purpose. Businesses and organizations establish data quality metrics or criteria that are tied directly to its goals and objectives. Once the quality guidelines are established, monitoring allows data to be checked over time, allowing informed improvements to be made in data systems. It also allows companies to best use the data they have available.

Each time data is created or accessed, the data monitoring software kicks in to measure and track information. Such software uses dashboards, alerts, and reports so you can watch what is happening with valuable data. Some of the attributes many organizations monitor data for include:

• Completeness
• Uniformity
• Accuracy
• Uniqueness

With such monitoring, problems with inaccuracies and unusual data behaviors can be detected immediately. If there are data quality issues, an administrator is sent an alert with information about the problems detected. This allows system administrators to check the data and prevent issues before they can become a real problem. It also lets business leaders determine where to focus data quality initiatives.

Additionally, data monitoring can save time and money by making it easier to change quality regulations to adapt to the company’s changing needs. With consistent data monitoring, businesses can also implement new initiatives regarding data without a preparation phase as well. That means fresh data initiatives can be put into place immediately with no wait time.

Backup Monitoring
The next step to the best in information management is data backup. This is where files and folders containing important business data are copied and/or archived so they can be restored in the event of a data loss. Recall the scenario at the beginning of this piece where your computer shut down. Without backup monitoring, you may have lost your work permanently.

Data loss can occur for a number of reasons from computer viruses and breaches to flood or file corruption. With a data monitoring system in place, you’ll be able to replace your lost data, thanks to backup services that occur automatically without any further thought from you or your staff.

While you may already have a backup in place, a single system is not enough should a failure occur. Additional backup systems are necessary in case of natural or man-made disasters or even to keep you covered in the event of data corruption in your original backup. Other reasons for employing a data backup system include:

• Tax Audits
• Client and Investor Relations
• Archiving
• Competitive Advantage
• Improved Productivity and Processes
• Peace of Mind

Data Recovery
Whether natural or man-made, disasters happen. From floods and breaches to ransomware and file corruption, all organizations need a plan in place to recover their data.

Just a few days ago, Anchorage, Ala., suffered an earthquake that hit 7.0 on the Richter scale. Such a major earthquake can cause serious damage including the loss of data. This is just one example of where disaster recovery can come in handy.

In addition to such natural disasters, the number of breaches each year continues to climb. In the first half of this year, breaches have led to 4.5 billion records being comprised, according to the latest findings of the Breach Level Index.

Thanks to data backup software, today’s businesses are able to overcome the loss of important or proprietary information. In the event of an emergency, system administrators can quickly recover from such data loss. Rather than a permanent loss of information, businesses can experience a short-term, temporary loss that can be rectified in a short time. With the right backups in place, data recovery allows you to retrieve everything from documents in Word or Excel to images and video.

If you would like more information about data monitoring, backup, or recovery software and services, contact Oram online or call us directly at (617) 933-5060. Our experts are here to help your business ensure continuity in the event of a breach or disaster.

Ransomware: A Guide for Protecting Todays Businesses

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Ransomware has become one of the top threats to businesses in today’s global and digital society. It has become such a danger in fact that a late 2017 report from Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that the global cost of cybercrime would reach $6 trillion by 2021 with ransomware playing a major role in that total. Furthermore, Cisco’s 2017 Annual Cybersecurity Report showed ransomware is increasing by 350 percent each year and a business falls victim to a ransomware attack every 40 seconds. Last year’s worldwide attack in May 2017 of the WannaCry ransomware caused complete and utter chaos around the globe and begged the question of what’s next.

So what is a business owner to do? For starters, you must know what you’re up against. Next, there are steps for preventing the threat from opening the door to your business. Here’s your guide to ransomware and how to stop it before it stops your business.

What Ransomware Is
Ransomware is a malicious malware that targets the private files of your business. While malware can cause some annoying problems or create more malicious issues such as reformatting a disk or deleting files, ransomware is different. Ransomware is a malware that infects computers and restricts access to files, stopping businesses in their tracks.

When you run into ransomware, you will know it because it will notify a system’s user that it has been attacked. The notification will come after the damage has been done and your information is already encrypted. A cybercriminal will use the ransomware to demand a ransom, typically money or cryptocurrency, in exchange for the safe return of files. If the funds are not paid, the cybercriminal responsible may delete or publish your private business files. If you do pay, you may still not get your data back anyway as the hacker responsible can simply take the money and run.

Like a virus that can attack the body, ransomware can attack an entire network. And like viruses, ransomware can morph and adapt from the way they spread to the way they encrypt data. This means a business must approach protection on a multitude of fronts and be ready to adapt to new protections as they are developed.

Means of Protection
Your IT provider should offer you protection through at least six areas. By securing a variety of entryways and providing layers of protection, your business will be safer from all threats including ransomware. At Oram, we take a six-step approach to protecting our clients against ransomware and other cyber threats.

Patching
The most basic layer of security is to monitor and patch all computers and applications on an ongoing basis. We address all known operating system security vulnerabilities with the latest patches. This measure is the first step in protecting your operating system particularly when a flaw has been uncovered. Your company’s outside business IT partner or in-house professionals should be providing the latest patches to ensure your operating systems are running at peak performance while ensuring any system vulnerabilities are addressed.

Anti-Virus and Network Monitoring
Businesses are being targeted every day through a plethora of avenues: email, ad networks, mobile applications, etc. This is why the second part of a best-in-class security network employs both anti-virus and network monitoring. These two pieces of the security puzzle examine all traffic on your business network and all files. The anti-virus employs a filter to protect them from all known threats. Your anti-virus should be updated regularly in order to identify the latest viral threats.

Backup and Disaster Recovery
One of the things cybercriminals bank on is that your business didn’t think ahead in terms of implementing backup and disaster recovery. That’s why this step is a must, especially where ransomware is concerned. There can sometimes be gaps between when a threat is introduced to your network and remediation of the full system.

To ensure that your data is safe, it’s best to have a full system backup in place to protect your back-office systems. This will enable your business to stay on top of things if and when an attack occurs and it provides a recovery option for unknown threats. In the event of a catastrophic failure or a ransomware attack, a good backup can get your business back online fast.

Endpoint Backup
Though backup and disaster recovery provides a layer of protection for your back-office systems, businesses should also have backup and recovery of data for all devices. Devices such as laptops and tablets create, share, and store business data. Should a device become lost or a cybercriminal capture your proprietary data and sensitive information from these devices, your business will still be covered. This can have a significant impact on your business productivity and profitability. Your endpoint program should offer real-time data backup on such endpoint devices to prevent the compromise of business-critical information and keep your organization moving full-steam ahead.

Secure File Sync and Share
In today’s global society, being able to work remotely, collaboratively, and securely from any device anywhere is a modern business necessity. With the proper software in place, your employees can securely collaborate from any location on any device including their smartphones and tablets. Such a system can allow you to grant access and editing controls for specific documents including those in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Such software also allows you to recover documents employees may have accidentally deleted or that have been lost due to malicious activity.

Education and Awareness
One of the best steps you can take in protecting your business against ransomware or other digital threats is to educate and train your employees. With proper cybersecurity awareness training, you can turn your employees into your most important layer of defense. They should be trained and provided with educational materials about cybersecurity risks, new ransomware strains, and the best practices for spotting phishing attempts, suspicious emails, and other security risks. Additionally, they should be provided a simple and quick way to report any suspicious activity. By empowering your employees with such training, they can become proactive in the fight against cyber threats to your business.

Small ransoms are just the beginning of the ransomware threat and it is only expected to get increasingly worse. This is why it is so imperative for businesses to stay ahead of cybercriminals when it comes to security. While such protection may seem overwhelming, it’s nothing when compared with the downtime, stress, and financial cost of dealing with a ransomware attack. If you need assistance in protecting your business against ransomware, contact Oram Corporate Advisors today for a free consultation at (617) 933-5060.