How To Prevent Hackers From Misusing Your Data
The world is a dangerous place; however, the online space is still worse. As we continue to shift our data and sensitive information on online platforms, we increase the risks that come with it. It is important to protect your data and information from everyone – not just hackers and malware. Spies and ethical hackers don’t just live in the movies, they are very much part of our surroundings.
Why would you want anybody to possess your data, anyway? It can be used maliciously by anybody and everybody because you can never testify for anybody’s intentions. Therefore, if you are interested in learning how to prevent hackers from misusing your data, stay put because that’s exactly what we’re going to be diving into in this article.
The most obvious trick is to secure connection with VPN but it is not the only way to ensure that. Here are the top five methods to ensure the complete security of your data. Let’s get started, shall we?
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Methods to Prevent Hackers From Accessing & Misusing Your Data
Check out the following quick and somewhat easy ways to elevate the status of your security.
Security Policy
The first and foremost ability of your security policy should be to detect and intervene whenever there’s an indication of misuse. Basically, what we’re expecting of a good security policy is for it to be able to inform and explain the actual purpose and intent of misuse immediately.
Here’s what you need to do; read the existing policies that your security protocol follows. Most importantly, see how it handles unexpected intrusions. Now you should go about the sections that depend on the insiders.
What that means is checking the security alert plan and ensuring that it doesn’t require following up with the administrator simply to request access. You never know, the administrator itself could be the culprit.
The next step is to check the details of the policy and the restrictions it has imposed. Most of the time, it’s the users who end up mishandling their own data. And of course, that could cause a severe problem and lead to a bunch of investigations. There could be a legal discourse as well. And so, you must always specify who can and cannot access data along with the circumstances under which those interventions can take place.
Physical Security
The ideal scenario is to ensure that no one threatening or potentially dangerous is around the security infrastructure. Sometimes, you can’t even trust the insiders and they should also be kept away from the critical center. The right measure would be to isolate the high-value systems and keep them far away from the restriction sections.
There must always be a tight control of access. Many places usually have system codes and
keycards but that’s too risky. You never know who to trust with the authentication as passcodes can easily be borrowed or stolen. Instead, what you can opt for is biometric authentication. This requires fingerprint scanning or eye detection, etc.
Tighten the Screening of New Hires
Whenever you hire new people, make sure you investigate and screen their background without bias or disturbance. The longer you investigate, the better. Of course, the most obvious one is to verify their contact and address. It will be extremely time-consuming if you go all the way, which is why it’s best to outsource this task.
Strong Authentication Methods
Technology continues to advance every passing day. Therefore, if you rely on the same old passcodes, you’re the one left behind and simply allowing perpetrators. And the truth is, whenever the password is too hard, it’s usually found written on a post-it note for the janitors and others.
This way, the password becomes easier to crack or to forward. If you look at other alternatives, you might get intimidated because the process is expensive. But there’s no need to worry. We do have cost-effective procedures that can ensure the implication of stronger multifactor authentication models, especially for the sensitive systems of the HR and accounting departments.
Smart cards, fingerprint detection, and tokens count as multi-factor authentication methods. You can opt for such measures if possible but make sure there are no loopholes left unaddressed. The window stations should always have names and they need to be locked out when there’s no activity taking place. No need to have people around for no reason.
Protect the Desktops
If you start depending on your employees for configurations, you’re about to take major risks. Therefore, the right thing to do is to use policies to ensure all important desktops remain close and protected. You can start by changing the settings of every desktop’s security zones.
Next up, forbid the use of third-party Microsoft Office apps. Infiltrate the internet proxies of your organization. You can also seek help from the Office Resource Kits as they can elevate the protection quota.
Monitor LANs
If you have network-based systems, there’s a high chance of intrusions. Therefore, always find the monitoring section; understandably challenging. What host-based networks do is rely heavily on LAN sniffers. This can be easy if there’s just one private internet connection but a monstrous task if you’re trying to protect a large network or company.
This will, actually, be quite impractical. What you should do here is treat LAN as enclaves and segment them through firewalls and all of them can connect to one thing at the end.
In Conclusion
By the end of this article, we expect you to understand the severity of the issue. It’s quite risky and dangerous to leave your personal and company data open for intruders and threats. The ideal thing to do here elevates the security in checks. This can be done via various methods.
For example, we would recommend you change and update passwords every now and then. Use VPN to encrypt your connections. Other than that, what you can do is monitor and segregate LAN, protect your desktop, increase physical security, verify security policies, and strengthen existing passwords. It would also be best if you lengthen the screening process of the new hires.
These are comparatively smaller measures but highly effective.
