Tag: data protection

  • Data breached? 5 ways to reduce the impact on your business.

    Data breached? 5 ways to reduce the impact on your business.

    We’ve posted a lot of articles on how to avoid a data breach (here are a couple of recent ones for you to review if one hasn’t happened to you so far and you’d like to keep it that way).

    Unfortunately, we fear that if you’ve reached this article you may be part of the growing number of business owners whose data has been breached (in 2020 there were 700,000 attacks on small businesses with damages exceeding $2.8 Billion).

    Data breach severity varies widely, from an employee email being temporarily hacked all the way to having your backups infiltrated and locked for a ransom – and even if you pay the ransom you still might not recover your data.

    So if you’ve experienced a significant data breach and wondered what you could have done to have a better outcome, or even if you’re in the midst of one now what should you do?

    Here are our top five tips for reducing your data breach costs (now or in the future):

    1. Damage Control – Turn to the pros (like us) when it comes to recovering your data in the event of a breach, they will have access to tools that could recover data that will otherwise be lost if decryption efforts fail in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Bottom line, know who you’re going to call in an emergency and don’t be afraid to get their help sooner rather than later.
    2. Downtime Mitigation – Downtime is one of the most expensive elements of a data breach, if you don’t already have a disaster recovery plan a previous breach can highlight exactly what needs to be a priority in your business if your data is unavailable. Also, a team like Valley Techlogic can help you create a disaster recovery plan.
    3. Turn to Your Vendors – Your vendors may have some methods for assisting you in the event of a data breach. For example Microsoft has a shared responsibility model for data but if you have Microsoft 365 and use OneDrive, some of that data may still be safe on their end and accessible to you (once your devices have been cleared and are safe to use).
    4. Be Transparent – If your business is very customer facing, an outage in your business caused by a data breach may be very obvious to them. We don’t recommend trying to hide the fact that a breach has happened but instead being transparent about what happened and what you did to fix it, and how you plan to prevent it in the future.
    5. Cyber Prepared – The best way to recover financially from a data breach is to have cyber insurance in place before the attack happens, while it may be too late for a past breach you can prevent future financial loss by using our guide to reviewing and obtaining cyber security insurance here.

    Of course, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure unfortunately when it comes to cybersecurity attacks. We would be remiss not to offer a few tips on preventing a data breach specifically. You can grab this checklist to make sure these items are covered to prevent future data breaches:

    Click to download the full size version.

    If you’re currently dealing with a data breach or have dealt with one in the past and want to prevent future breaches, Valley Techlogic can help. We are experts in cybersecurity and use industry best practices to provide the best security coverage for our customers that is also cyber insurance compliant. Learn more with a consultation today.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • Yesterday, Facebook experienced their worst outage since 2008

    Yesterday, Facebook experienced their worst outage since 2008

    Yesterday if you were trying to login to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or even Oculus VR you wouldn’t have had much luck. Facebook experienced their worst outage since 2008 (when a bug caused the site to be down for an entire day). They were down for just over 6 hours as a world that suddenly found themselves with more time on their hands speculated why.

    For a brief period, the domain Facebook.com was even for sale if you performed a search for the domain on a domain name search website.

    While many thought it could be an attack on their networks, such as what’s been happening in the VoIP sector lately, others speculated the outage was related to the fire Facebook has been under lately for their business practices.

    On Sunday, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen – a former Facebook project manager – went public on how Facebooks policies prioritize profits over their user’s wellbeing. She was the person responsible for the massive data dump that showed Facebook’s algorithms even optimize for hate speech. She noted these problems also exist at Google and Pinterest, other companies she’s performed similar duties for, but that the problem is much worst at Facebook.

    Mark Zuckerberg Meme
    There have been no shortage of memes taking shots at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg following the outage.

    Hearings begin this week analyzing the whistleblower findings, particularly as they relate to children on these sites. Amid the controversy Facebook has shelved plans for an Instagram Kids app, though Facebook claims the delay is so they can better analyze the needs of children and parents before moving forward with the app.

    The main crux of the case has to do with both the deluge of data and how major players such as Facebook (and likely beyond) serve that data to their users. It’s a tricky situation because you don’t want to stifle free speech but promoting hate speech and negative imagery, especially to vulnerable audiences such as children, is also wrong.

    There is so much more to the case then we can get to here but suffice to say hearings such as these play an important role in how we as a society consume and regulate data.

    Back to the topic at hand though, after being down for 6 hours Facebook finally emerged although they did so with little in the way of answers as to why their domains were down to the first place. They’ve issued an apology for the outage but beyond that silence.

    Experts who have weighed in speculate the issue had to do with Facebooks DNS (Domain Name System), and anonymous comments that have surfaced from employees said they don’t think the downtime was caused by an attack.

    Some reports have even said during the outage functions inside Facebook offices ground to a halt, with some employees being unable to even use their keycards which could have also contributed to the lengthy delay in fixing the problem.

    Outages such as these should cause even smaller businesses to take a hard look at their technology practices. If Facebook, with the resources they have available, can be brought to a standstill for hours over potentially a small issue such as DNS how would your business fare when faced with a similar issue?

    Downtime adds up, but it doesn’t have to. Having a partner in technology like Valley Techlogic is the number one way your business can avoid the hassle, expense, and embarrassment of lengthy downtime. Find out more today.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, adns, n IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.