Outsourcing your IT will lead to a more stable, secure and scalable set of systems for your Business

In order to grow your business into something that will fulfil your goals you need to devote an enormous amount of time to looking after your baby.

Password scam phishing emails

There seems to be a bunch of these going round, a simple email from a known person from their email account - not spoofed - with a link to a shared document - except it's not, the link will be to a hacked website with a hidden page designed to trick you into giving up your passwords.

Thanks to Alex, a Detective of the NZ Police for giving me his time to talk about cybercrime in NZ. We talked about some really interesting topics and cases as well as how individuals or Businesses can better understand the threat, risks and how to protect themselves out there.

Spotting internal fraud

This is one where unfortunately I can speak from experience. There are some normally honest people who will rip you off out of opportunity, and some broken people who scam you because if they can you deserve it or will do so because they beleive their own bullshit and thus think they are entitled to what ever they can take.

TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION

This seems like a hassle but it really isn't compared to the pain of being compromised. Simply put it's too easy for your login details for your critical business systems to be compromised but if you have 2FA enabled on your Xero Account, Office 365 or Client Database then as long as the kackers aren't holding a knife to your throat they aren't going to get in.

USB drives are great for silently spreading an infection. * Scan yours between sites * if you don't use them in your business then block their use * NEVER PLUGIN A FOUND DRIVE! It's been done in the wild in Aussie: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37431335

Defense in depth

7 Essential layers for your businesses IT security - affordable for young dynamic businesses looking to scale.

Spam filtering
Next Gen Firewall
Web Filtering
AV & Antimalware
OS & Application updates
Staff education
an Effective BC/DR plan.

If you are looking to travel for business then here are some tips for you to consider:

Before you go abroad for work, 1) check in with your IT people, 2) get your phone on a roaming plan 3) put a PIN on your phone 4) encrypt your hardrive 5) if you lose it then get hold of your IT Partner to get help with either locating it, wiping the data, recovery or to help get a workaround solution in place.

Failing to test is testing on failure. (or in other words check your backups actually work)

updates and yet more frikkin updates..

Daniel says - let us keep your computers and servers up to date - it's all part of running a well behaved system and being a good netizen.