Christmas is less than a week away, so you need to make sure you take the right security precautions for your company, especially for their smartphones. It’s essential to make sure you adhere to good security procedures because many offices, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities close over the holiday season.
You won’t find French Hens or Golden Rings here if you’re looking for them. This Christmas season, Salt Communications is delivering you the gift of guidance on how to keep your organisation safe and secure.
Out of office shouldn’t mean out of mind
During the holidays, when your company’s defences are weak and the majority of the personnel are out of the office for an extended period of time, a cybercriminal can buy more time and slip through your systems unnoticed.
On July 4th 2021, a cybercrime group penetrated the US IT company Kaseya in the days before the Independence Day holiday and demanded $70 million in ransom on the company blog. More than 1,000 enterprises in their supply chain were impacted on a global scale. However, you don’t need to generate millions of dollars in revenue to draw in bad actors; in fact, micro and smaller-sized businesses and even individual consumers are particularly vulnerable. Although the digital door of your company may be closed, are you certain that it is locked securely?
Given the average cost of a cyberattack, which according to government data is close to £8,500, more than 1.3 million small and medium-sized firms in the UK could go out of business if you are not protected.
How to protect your organisations this Christmas
As businesses and organisations prepare for the Christmas season, the organisation’s radar should be up due to heightened risk exposure and an increase in the number of employees taking annual leave.
12 days of Christmas mobile security tips:
- Scam messages (smishing attempts) – Smishing, often known as SMS phishing, is a phishing cybersecurity attack carried out over mobile text messages. Make sure not to click on any ‘Christmas deals’ style text messages without validating the contact.
- Install latest software and patches – Don’t forget to install the most recent updates and fixes if you buy any new devices this month. By updating your system, you can prevent hackers from taking advantage of bugs in outdated hardware or software.
- Create strong passwords – Check the current status of all account login information before everyone goes off for the holidays. It can be challenging to remember all of your passwords if you use different ones for each of your key accounts. By using three random words, you can make your passwords easier to remember, you should also store them in a secure password manager.
- Create a backup – Keep backups isolated from your network and systems by sending and storing them elsewhere, such as on a secure communications app.
- Don’t use public Wi-Fi – When possible, use mobile data or hotspot devices when shopping rather than free public WiFi.
- Two-Factor authentication – By requiring a second layer of protection before granting access, two-factor authentication (2FA) makes sure that each new device seeking to log in or make account modifications is required. Single-use codes can be sent via SMS, email, phone, or smartphone application as part of 2FA.
- Be aware of mobile interception – When on calls over the holiday period be aware of mobile interception on your smartphone.. Hackers can listen in on phone calls or open text messages.
- Safeguard your mobile data – Holiday emails are flying around quicker than Santa’s reindeer on Christmas Eve. Sadly, it’s all too easy for workers caught up in the holiday hustle to be less cautious about what they click on.
- Read all app T&C’s – Be aware of what apps you are downloading at this time of the year, whether that is a festive game or family app. Many of these apps can sell your data on to third parties without you realising if you haven’t read the T&C’s.
- Watch out for backdoor exploits – A type of malware known as a backdoor exploits bypasses standard authentication mechanisms to gain access to a system. As a result, resources within an application, such databases and file servers, are accessible remotely, allowing offenders the opportunity to remotely execute commands on the system and update malware.
- Don’t upload your confidential information to the cloud – When taking photos or photographic confidential information such as credentials at this time of the year be even more vigilant about where you are uploading it to. Ensure you are always sending your confidential information via a secure communications channel.
- Use a secure communications system – not just at Christmas but all year round you should ensure that you are protecting your mobile device with an encrypted secure communications solution.
The winter holidays are considered to be the ideal period for business hacking by more than 56% of cybercriminals. The busy Christmas season, together with the growth in smartphone thefts and mobile cybercrime, show the need to be proactive in protecting endpoint devices. A savvy firm should examine and grasp external impacts on their organisation. When done correctly, tracking, managing, and securing devices becomes simple and gives your organisation peace of mind.
Please get in contact with us if you have any questions regarding this or anything else related to your mobile communications. Our goal is to assist organisations with securing their private communications. Here’s to a peaceful and trouble-free Christmas and a prosperous new year!
About Salt Communications
Salt Communications is a multi-award winning cyber security company providing a fully enterprise-managed software solution giving absolute privacy in mobile communications. It is easy to deploy and uses multi-layered encryption techniques to meet the highest of security standards. Salt Communications offers ‘Peace of Mind’ for Organisations who value their privacy, by giving them complete control and secure communications, to protect their trusted relationships and stay safe. Salt Communications is headquartered in Belfast, N. Ireland, for more information visit Salt Communications.
