As a business leader it can be difficult to decipher what security threats you need to keep a close eye on versus those that are not as likely to impact your organization. That’s especially true these days when you are likely getting hit by a message about how important cybersecurity is nearly every five minutes.

While we will always agree that cybersecurity is critical and we consider it our job to educate small and mid-size business leaders about the ins and outs of protecting their organization, we understand the fatigue related to the steady stream of scary threats.

So, to help you wade through all the muck, we’ve highlighted three frequent targets for cyber attacks. If you can eliminate these attack vectors, you will make significant progress in building up your defenses.

“Ghost Users” are active accounts for former employees on the corporate network despite their departure from the company. Criminals seek out ghost users’ credentials when trying to encrypt or steal company data – they know their suspicious network behavior is less likely to be detected since the account is probably not anyone’s primary account.

What makes the situation with ghost users tricky is that they aren’t always inactive and they aren’t always left around by accident. When high-level employees leave their accounts are sometimes intentionally left active. That’s because those credentials are used to access important computers or software tools.

Read this blog to learn more about how cyber attackers exploit ghost users and what you can do to stop it from happening – https://www.wingswept.com/what-is-a-ghost-user-are-they-the-weakest-link-in-your-cybersecurity/.

Each piece of information your company retains increases its risk. Some of that risk is unavoidable, you need data to run your business.

But there’s also plenty of data risk that’s not worth carrying. Consider former customers’ expired credit card numbers. You’ll never charge that card again, but if it’s left unsecured and leaked or stolen, it can expose you to lawsuits. If that expired number is successfully used to steal current financial information, it can also ruin a pretty good month (or year) for a former customer.

Read this blog to find three ways to protect your organization from exposing dangerous data – https://www.wingswept.com/how-keeping-old-data-can-hurt-your-business/.

Three Places You May Be Storing Sensitive Data without Knowing It

This became an especially important factor when the pandemic hit in March 2020 and employers sent their employees home in droves to work from home for the first time. Confusion reigned on both sides and many of us were preoccupied with what was happening around us and less focused on keeping data secure.

As a result, business data started being stored on all sorts of devices and in different places than it had ever been stored before. We were all doing the best we could.

Now may be the time to audit those practices. This blog highlights three places where your company’s sensitive data may be stored and what you should consider doing if it is in order to avoid a data breach – https://www.wingswept.com/three-places-you-may-be-storing-sensitive-data-without-knowing-it/.

If you have additional questions about data security or would like to strengthen your organization’s defense against cyber attacks, please call us at 919-460-7011 or email us at Team_WingSwept@WingSwept.com.