Straight Talk About Phoenix IT Services, Cyberthreats and Budgeting

For years, you’ve heard from your Phoenix IT services team about all the preventative cyber measures they’ve implemented. You have defenses in place, like your firewall. These are good deterrents and form one component of a solid cybersecurity plan.

But if all, or most, of your cyber budget is spent on prevention, you’re woefully underprepared for an attack.

Today’s criminals will find a way through your perimeter defenses.

Why a Prevention-Only Approach Leaves You Exposed to Threats

Hackers jump on zero-day vulnerabilities

No software is infallible. Security flaws exist in every application. Most developers catch the issue and release a patch. Sometimes, criminals discover the vulnerability first. This lets them launch what we call “zero-day exploits.” Until a fix is released by the developer, any hacker who knows how to take advantage of the defect can launch an attack.

Hackers sell zero-day exploits and governments pay

In 2021, the going rate for a zero-day exploit on an iPhone was $3 million. For a government, that’s a paltry sum. They’ll pay without blinking an eye if it creates a backdoor for them to enter company databases, personal devices and networks.

You don’t have to be the direct target. Over 30,000 organizations were affected when Chinese threat actors manipulated a flaw in Microsoft Exchange servers.

Employees are unwitting accomplices to cybercrime

Social engineering attacks try to get your employees to give up confidential information (like credentials) or money. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, 96% are delivered via email. In other words, the attack bypasses your firewall and antivirus entirely. Only one employee needs to click a link or respond to a scam for your company to be compromised.

Phoenix IT services say size doesn’t matter – it’s all about the Benjamins

Eighty-five percent of social engineering attacks Verizon evaluated were financially motivated – and you’re a prime target. Your firm has client records filled with personal information hackers can sell on the Dark Web. Or, the criminal might write a persuasive email that convinces a member of your team that the “boss” needs money wired to an account. They might only spend a few hours writing and researching. That makes even a few thousand dollars a good payday.

In successful business email compromise attacks, the median loss was $30,000.

– 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report

Your clients trust you with their financial information.

Retain their confidence and invest in the new cybersecurity essentials.

Be cybersecure and compliant

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The New Cybersecurity Essentials Your Phoenix IT Services Partner Should Provide

At cybersecurity conferences, the conversation has shifted. Discussions once dominated by “how to keep hackers out,” focus more on detection and remediation.

Remediation can save your firm

With prevention, you’re putting all your eggs in one basket and hoping for the best. Remediation takes a different approach. You constantly evaluate your own environment and hunt down threats. You’ll do this through a combination of audits, assessments and threat detection tools.

How to detect today’s threats: SIEM and EDR Alongside your traditional antivirus, you want your Phoenix and Denver IT services provider to have security incident and event management (SIEM) software and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools.

SIEM and EDR constantly run in the background, looking for suspicious activities. Alerts are automatically generated. You’ll know what is happening on which device. Not every alert is a real or actionable threat. You might have elevated someone’s access privileges on purpose, but it gets added to the log because the activity looks odd.

Have a trained cyber expert review the warnings

Don’t delegate the review process to an office manager. They lack the training and won’t be available to respond to alerts logs at 3 a.m.

Evaluate cybersecurity companies in Arizona and Colorado for availability and expertise

Detection is a 24/7 job

Your office manager wouldn’t want to be responsible for reviewing logs at 3 a.m. But your Denver or Phoenix IT support team should be willing and able to do respond to a call. Any hour. Day or night. Only work with cyber experts who can respond to threats 24/7.

Find out what happens during a 3 a.m. cyber battle

Pay attention to industry experience

There’s overlap between a comprehensive cybersecurity approach and the regulations from the SEC and Division of Examinations. A provider with extensive financial services experience and a cybersecurity background will point out which tools pull double duty for your firm.

Aligning your cyber and compliance reduces the chances you’ll pay twice for the same tool. You gain a partner who provides documentation you can use in audits, making compliance easier.

How to Adjust Your Budget

Again, prevention still matters. But it’s share of the budget is shrinking. Smartly spend your cyber budget by reallocating money away from prevention and toward detection and remediation. Don’t make it a 50-50 split.

Use itSynergy Phoenix IT Services and Consulting to strike the right balance

There’s a Goldilocks element to figuring out what to spend on prevention, detection and remediation. What is “just right” for one of your peers could cause you to overspend without adding adequate protection.

The best way to find your risks, address vulnerabilities and improve security is to get a rapid risk assessment. This evaluation assesses your on-premise and cloud environments — affordably. You see into your systems, find out what criminals could exploit and get a to-do list that mitigates each risk.

Uncover your fatal flaws – before the hackers do.

Get a Rapid Security Assessment