Security Best Practices, Pt. 1

These days more than ever companies large and small need to remain vigilant in the face of the ever growing, ever changing face of internet security threats. Effective computer maintenance has never been more important. There was a time when simply having a reliable antivirus (AV) program on your computer was enough. Nowadays the bad guys are smarter, their tools are better, and the attack surface (amount of ways they can reach you) is greater than ever.

What I hope to achieve with this series is to give you a sense of what threats are out there, without fear mongering and hysteria.

In the very early days, there were not as many threats as there are now. At the time the operating systems (usually Windows XP) and more specifically Internet Explorer 6 or 7 lacked the inherent ability to defend against such attacks, so the hackers and script kiddies were having a field day. 

Since the release of Windows 7, 8 and now 10, and the proliferation of better browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, and IE 10 and 11, these types of relatively benign attacks are largely a thing of the past.

By the way, this is a good time to remind you, if you still have a computer running Windows XP  somewhere, please go right now and unplug it from the internet. It is almost certainly already infected.

For a brief period there we had it pretty good. With most of our clients, if we kept the computer up to date with Windows Updates, used an up to date browser, and were on windows 7 or above, things were pretty stable and the computers seemed safe. But, there was a new threat on the horizon, one that would change the face of computer and network security forever.

Please continue to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin, or subscribe to our newsletter to see the next article in the series, where I will delve into modern threats and how to avoid them.

Takeaways:

-Get rid of Windows XP

-Keep your Windows up to date

-Keep your browsers up to date

-Make sure you have a good AV program

Contact us if you would like a free, no obligation report on the state of your network.