Some of the nicest people get hacked. Don’t let it happen to you. So, how do you know if your business has been hacked? My bet is you don’t—and you may never know. The sad fact is that most of the systems you are using right now do NOT have any ability to alert you to hacker-type activities or a breach. You may be thinking, “Can’t Windows 10 let me know?” Nope. “Can my anti-virus app alert me?” Nope. At best your anti-virus (anti-spyware, anti-malware, etc.) systems will block a rogue app. That’s great protection, but many of today’s hacks are being done with fileless hacking (i.e. no file for the Anti-XXXX app to catch).
You don’t know what you don’t know. – Socrates
Address Potential Computer Hacks With 3rd-party Security Applications
The only real way to address this risk is to run additional 3rd-party security applications. Thankfully these are cost-effective and you have a lot of choices to fit your business and environment. Using one of the newer artificial intelligence-based anti-xxxx apps will go a long way to help. These work differently. Beyond looking at the file for something rogue, it also looks at the computer’s processor activity. If it finds rogue hacker behavior, it shuts it down. This is much better than traditional anti-virus apps.
Protecting Your Business Computers From Hacks with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
The next step in protecting yourself and ensuring no one is hacking into your system is to implement an EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) platform. This monitors all computer activity and looks for anomalies and rogue activity. For example, you receive an Excel document from someone, it makes it passed the anti-virus since there is nothing to catch. You open the file and you get prompted to enable macro’s which is fairly normal and you are ok with it since the file is from someone you know and the file may very well need macros. Everything seems normal on your end so you think you are ok. Different story with the EDR platform. It sees you open an Excel document and then enables macros (both ok activities), but then the EDR detects a hidden Windows Command window open. The EDR will raise a cautionary flag because the open window is not normal. Then the hidden command window accesses a Russian server and that is definitely not good so it shuts it down immediately.
What you don’t know will hurt you. – Jim Rohn
Dig Deeper into How To Know If Your Business Computers Have Been Hacked:
If you want some recommendations, please contact me and I’ll be glad to give you the names of some of the tools our clients leverage. (NOTE: We do NOT share our tool names via our posts. Cybersecurity best practices recommend NOT too because doing so creates unneeded risks as hackers are always searching for vulnerabilities). Shoot me an email (jahlberg[at]waident.com) or give me a call (630-547-7011)
Check out these posts for some additional information so you can dig deeper for learning how to better protect yourself from having a Cyber Security breach.
Basic IT Hygiene to Prevent Ransomware-10 Steps All Financial Firms Must Take
