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managed IT services San AntonioIt seems that everywhere you turn, another business is in the news because it has been attacked by cyber criminals. It doesn’t seem to matter whether that company is large or small. Social engineering is being used as the way in for many malware attacks, but if you take the advice of managed IT services providers in San Antonio, you could avoid them and save yourself and your business both money and time. It is difficult to keep up with the variety of techniques hackers use to ruin businesses, but most of them now exploit a company’s weakest link.

Where Is Your Company’s Weakest Link?

Simply put, your main vulnerability is your staff. Unfortunately, the easiest way to infiltrate a business is by tricking its employees using social engineering. This involves manipulating people so that they are fooled into giving up confidential information or giving criminals a way into a company’s secure systems.

There are a number of ways that hackers routinely use to get the better of employees and convince them to click links or download attachments. Managed IT services providers in San Antonio have found that they largely fall into three categories:

  • Emails that purport to come from a known contact where addresses have been faked from a contact list or found on social media, such as LinkedIn
  • Emails that exploit insider knowledge of the recipient’s interests, again discovered through social media
  • Emails that contain free offers of pornography, celebrity gossip or sensational news videos

How to Avoid an Attack in Your Company

Luckily, there are ways you can try to prevent any such attacks, and most of them involve training for your employees so that they do not get sucked in by these tactics. The main message you should instill in them is not to believe what they are seeing. If they are asked to download any attachment for whatever reason or asked for confidential information, then they should double check that it is a valid request before doing anything. Being skeptical is the key, and everything should be investigated thoroughly first.

Secondly, you should limit knowledge of sensitive information to just the members of staff who require it to do their job. There are also technical loopholes that you must make sure you close as much as possible. Always keep up-to-date with software patches on antivirus and anti-malware software programs. They aren’t perfect, but they will do a lot to keep out the more basic attacks. Finally, all your logins should have strong, regularly changed passwords and dual-factor authentication.

Do you feel that your company is in control of security, or do you think that you could be helped by a managed IT services company in San Antonio, like ICS? We have many years of experience in managing security in businesses around the San Antonio area and beyond, and we can help you protect your employees and business from unscrupulous cyber criminals. Contact us so that we can make sure your company is not at risk of being infected by malware or viruses. We’ll also make sure you know how to instruct your employees to be wary of attempted incursions and how you can safeguard your company at all times.