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Do you know where hackers are most likely to gain access to your private data? Discover the favorite entry points and how you can stop them.
It seems like every week that there are reports of another massive data breach hitting the news. The number of users affected is almost unimaginable. Cybercriminals accessed 983 million records at Verifications.Io and 885 million records at First American Financial Corp., alone. Its scary stuff, but what’s even more terrifying is the majority of compromised companies never show up in the papers.
During the first half of 2019, there an average of 30 data breaches per day. So, how are hackers stealing so many records so quickly? They have their ways.
1. Old Websites. The internet is a graveyard of abandoned and unprotected half-built sites which are the favorite hunting grounds for hackers who are on the lookout for easy and virtually risk-free hacking opportunities. Although it is true that most of these sites contain nothing more than a few email addresses and dummy accounts, every so often, a cybercriminal can strike goldmine. On occasion, legacy and demo sites for large businesses are still connected to the company’s servers and provide a nice backdoor to confidential data.
You can protect your business by completely removing old sites from online and limiting which sites have access to your servers.
2. Free Code. Many sites offer free code snippets that you can use for free on your website. All you have to do is download it and you can save hours of time and thousands of dollars. Good deal, right? Well, have you ever heard the Japanese saying, “There is nothing more expensive than something free?” When it comes to the code for your website, it is a motto you should take to heart. Using someone else’s free code for your company’s website could be the most expensive mistake you ever made. While clean, secure codes for free does exist online, the majority of what you will find is usually poorly written, and as solid as a sieve.
Stop hackers from using embedded backdoors in public code by not using it for mission-critical websites.
3. Unsecured Cloud Storage. Everyone is talking about the benefits of cloud computing and cloud storage, and it seems like businesses can’t wait to make the jump to working on the cloud. But before trusting your company’s confidential data to any third-party cloud storage solution, you better make sure the vendor has tight security. Many big-name companies like Facebook and Microsoft forgot to ensure their third-party vendors had the proper security, and the results were embarrassing and costly data breaches.
Carefully choose who you use for outsourcing and take an active role in protecting your data, even if it is hosted on a third-party’s server.
4. Unprotected APIs. Does your business use custom apps that utilize APIs? If the answer is yes, you may be exposing your confidential data to hackers without knowing it. While in-house app developers spend a great amount of time safeguarding your app itself, from exploits, the APIs you are using from an outside developer to power your app may be a gaping hole in your defense.
Review the end-user agreements for the APIs you use and conduct penetration tests to check for vulnerabilities.
In the end, protecting your data and the confidential information of your customers falls on your shoulders. No one can be perfect when it comes to online security, but every single business can do better.