Malware can be scary to talk about, but it’s a topic that you should be intimately familiar with, or at least aware of, if you want to keep your business running. These days, you can’t do much of anything online without potentially exposing yourself and your organization to a security risk. Today, we want to explore the different types of malware you might encounter and why it’s so important to take action today to limit their influence on your business.
Truth be told, there are a lot of different types of malware, so we’ll limit today’s conversation to just the three types you’re most likely to encounter: viruses, ransomware, and spyware.
Viruses are little pieces of code that can attach themselves to legitimate files and spread throughout your network like wildfire when the code is executed. Viruses are notorious for slowing down computers, corrupting data, or even crashing your systems. Admittedly, though, viruses are the least of your concerns compared to some of these other threats on this list.
Imagine having your entire network taken hostage by a criminal organization, only returning it to you if you pay a ransom. It’s essentially a digital shakedown with no guarantee of the safe return of your data. Increasingly, ransomware is using double or even triple-extortion methods, where the cybercriminal threatens to release your data online or sell it on the black market unless you pay up.
Spyware is kind of the opposite of ransomware, as it lurks in the background, secretly monitoring your activities. It can log your keystrokes, making it easy for criminals to get away with stealing passwords, credit card numbers, and other types of sensitive information. Since this type of malware wants to stay hidden, it can often go undetected for months or even years if you’re not looking for the telltale signs of a data breach.
I know what you’re thinking: “My business is small potatoes, why would a hacker want to steal my data?”
The reality of the situation is that all businesses collect and store sensitive information that is a treasure trove to hackers. This includes proprietary data and intellectual property, sensitive personal information for your employees, and financial information for your customers such as credit card numbers. Failure to protect this data could undermine not only your business’ future but also put it at serious risk of regulatory compliance fines.
And that’s before we even get to the loss of reputation that a security breach could result in; no one wants to work with a business that doesn’t take its data security seriously, after all.
Managed IT services from First Column IT can help your organization stay safe from all manner of threats, malware or otherwise. Through a combination of powerful security measures, employee training, and system monitoring, you can be confident that we’re on-task and ready to take action should the need arise. To learn more about what we can do to keep your business safe, call us at (571) 470-5594 today.
