Your business New Year's Resolution can be to secure your technology, which will save you money in the coming year. Take a look at our Security Refresher to refine your businesses security.

Every year most of us make a personal New Year’s resolution, which we promptly forget in February. This year let’s make a business resolution to secure our technology, because it will do something we all love -- save us money! First a quick refresher on how threats are infecting our ever increasing technology centered business practices.

1. Social Networking - Most business explicitly don't allow this practice at all. But it is increasing with popularity because of the potential for leads to new customers and to expand your corporate profile. There are many security risks associated with social media, such as Apps from unknown or malicious sources that can easily hack your password and send malicious post to all your contacts. This opens your page and others to security risks. Also be careful what you post, a dose of vigilance to anyone posting on your corporate page, to not expose too much information to potential hackers and thieves. It is best to adhere to a social media policy to mitigate many of these risks and train your employees.
2. Mobile - Mobile phones expose your business to security risks, if every employee uses a blackberry that is configured by your IT department and can be wiped clean remotely if lost, the only security risk is the employee itself. But if you allow personal phones to be used for business, this is an issue, which needs addressing. This is when a extensive mobile phone policy needs to be in place to insure the security of company information should the phone become compromised or lost.
3. Email - We all are aware of the many ploys to hack our email through legitimate looking emails but are, in fact, malicious emails phishing for information. I do have one tip especially since, regardless of our risk knowledge, this is the most common way of getting a virus. TIP: If in doubt of the authenticity of the email; right click, then go to Message Options, and look in the Internet Header area. This area details the emails origin, if the received from address is not matching who the email claims to be from, don't open it. Also there is an IP address which you can submit to the IT department or to your internet provider to block that IP address.

These three are the most common means hackers and thieves will infiltrate your system and wreak havoc on the technology in your business. Next some definitions of common security threats to refresh your security lingo.

• Virus - damage programs, delete data or crash hardware specifically your hard drive, spreads from one computer to another quickly through a common connection.
• Trojan - is a malicious software or program designed to appear useful, such as a Fake Antivirus, but steal end-user information, perform destructive harm on the target computer, or even download another malware.
• Malware - Includes all threats virus, worm, Trojan, etc. Simply means malicious code.
• Spyware - Collects data from the computer it is installed on. This can be malicious program installed by a thief or purposefully installed by an employer to monitor activities.

Finally, I will leave you with the ultimate way to insure the security of your data,  BACK-IT-UP completely and regularly then store it off site or in a fire safe.  This way even if you are hacked and/or your hard drives become corrupt due to Malware you can restore what was lost.  That concludes my 2012 security refresher, may your New Year be a safe and happy one.