Why invest a lot of time and money doing a cybersecurity risk assessment to receive a lengthy report to find out all the things you know you didn’t have, all the things you know are broken and all the things you know need to be fixed?

Yes, a top-notch Cybersecurity Analyst will report all of that, but it should only be a portion of the overall findings.  An experienced Cybersecurity Analyst will find a lot of things your IT department didn’t know because they either lack the expertise or simply lack the bandwidth to get to these findings.  Most IT departments are overused and are spending the majority (if not all) of their time just trying to keep the lights on.

At Cyber Advisors, we believe the Primary Engineer is one of the most crucial roles we use so you have a great experience with our Managed IT Services. Yet, the value of having a Primary Engineer working with you is not always well understood before a Managed IT Services agreement begins. There are other Managed IT Service Providers that do not provide a dedicated Engineer-level resource to their customers. Instead, they provide a technician who is ready to serve when they are available, which may be a person the customer has never seen before. Without a complete understanding of their role and their value, the significance of the Primary Engineer may be overlooked.

As a kid there was nothing more I loved than playing sports and competing.  Now, as an adult and father of two, there is not much more I enjoy in my life than coaching.  Initially, I was thrilled introducing my kids to the sports that brought me so much joy child and about teaching the basic skills of each sport.  As my son has grown older and the skills and competition become more advanced new elements to coaching youth sports start to emerge.

According to a report from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, financial losses from cyber-crime grew 90% from 2017 to 2018, while the number of complaints only grew 16%¹. These numbers indicate that cyber criminals are getting more effective at siphoning large sums of money when they do succeed in compromising systems. This is likely due to the higher levels of sophisticated methods and tools they leverage to bypass traditional security measures such as next generation firewall and antivirus solutions. IT and Cyber Security Professionals in turn must also implement more sophisticated methods and tools to protect their organization’s digital assets.

As companies prepare their budgets for 2020, financial leaders across the world are often looking at IT as one of their biggest annual costs. Additionally, each year seems to bring on steep increases depending on the type of organization and how they invest in technology. The expense is not necessarily predictable either- the more an organization has workloads in the cloud, the more likely the final expense becomes a moving target. 

A Security Breach Can Happen To Anyone: Small or Large

Many in the cyber security industry are aware of the Equifax breach. It was one of the largest and most well- known data breaches to date, affecting 143 million personally identifiable information (PII) records of U.S. citizens. Perhaps the most alarming detail about this breach was that Equifax did indeed have a robust security program. Hackers were able to circumvent security controls by exploiting a vulnerability in the open source component, Apache Struts, which is an open source web application framework used to develop Java web applications. During that same year, WannaCry ransomware was released into the wild and there were a record breaking 14,000 vulnerabilities reported to US-CERT, according to CVE details¹. In 2018, that number jumped to over 16,000. The lesson every organization should learn from this event is that a breach can happen to any business, small or large.

Why Outsource to a Managed IT Provider

Many organizations employ the services of a Managed IT Services Provider (MSP). One reason for this may be due to the high cost of employing an IT Professional in-house. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a Network Administrator in 2018 was $82,050 (not including costs of healthcare, paid time off, and other benefits). Given that the job market has continued to be at all-time lows, companies are focusing on leveraging their capital and other resources to focus on hiring talent that contributes to their core business. Shifting funds from strategic roles to support roles may hinder a company’s ability to compete, which may be a reason why companies are moving to and continue to outsource IT functions.

With all the security news recently of WPA2 wireless being broken with the KRACK attack methods, the Wi-Fi Alliance® has put together the next security standard called WPA3 that should do away with most of the insecurities of WPA2 and open wireless networks altogether. WPA3 is expected to arrive sometime in 2018. 

Cyber Security is an on-going battle and there isn't one best way to protect yourself. Because security is so important and there are many aspects to it, The Motherboard published a great comprehensive guide on how to not get hacked. This article is updated regularly and is great for just about everyone. If you have further questions regarding cyber security and how to better protect your self contact Cyber Advisors. 

I was fortunate enough to attend the Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando, FL this year. During the conference, there was a TON of information to gather, experts to network with, and vendors to see in the Expo Hall.