publish date is May 7th, 2020
By: Brian Gammon, vCIO

With employees working from home offices, your organization’s IT Infrastructure is under increased pressure from a myriad of cyber attacks. There are many layers to an organization’s defense system against cyber criminals and their arsenal of attacks. However, we have identified two areas that are great places to start; increasing your organization’s security awareness and evaluating your Phishing posture. Let’s take a quick look at these two recommendations. It’s come to be known as building a human firewall, and we tend to agree. Your team members are either your weakest link or your best defense against security threats. Their understanding or lack of, truly can affect every aspect of your IT Infrastructure protection system. Your end-users are targeted with an onslaught of newer and more clever messages and techniques every day. To build your human firewall, we suggest starting with at least a basic and continuous end user security awareness program. The training can be high level, yet should cover key areas such as: Phishing, Spear Phishing, Ransomware, malicious attachments, e-mail targeting, and more. It is especially critical for small and medium-size enterprises, including non-profits, to provide endusers with current, relevant, and ongoing internet security awareness training and for your organization to enforce compliance. With employees working from home, attacks like Phishing and Spear Phishing have increased significantly. Cybercriminals have ramped up attempts to steal confidential information with these techniques. According to research by software firm Trend Micro, a whopping 91% of cyber attacks and any resulting breach begins with a Phishing or Spear Phishing attack. Phishing, in general, is more of a shotgun approach sent to many email addresses to convince recipients to click, open, or act on instructions designed to expose private information. Spear phishing is a similar technique, usually via email, yet targeted at a specific individual or department within an organization that appears to be from a trusted source. Cybercriminals then leverage this information for further attack or sell it to someone who will leverage it for further attack. How vulnerable are your end users and your IT infrastructure environment to Phishing attacks and how do you measure it? Do you have a process your end users know to follow for handling and reporting these attempts? Evaluating your organization’s approach and response to these threats and training your end users are effective means of protecting your data. Sophisticated Systems utilizes a set of established best practices and standards and has a variety of partnerships that can be leveraged to help your organization protect itself from phishing attempts and cyber threats.

Sophisticated Systems’ has been providing technology services and solutions to Central Ohio for more than a quarter-century. Our Technology Solutions Group has more than 200 years of expertise amongst its team, and we are knowledgeable and experienced in developing Disaster Recovery plans.
We offer customizable technology solutions that fit the needs of our clients. Our skilled technology professionals deliver measurable value to our clients so that they can focus on their business priorities.

Our suite of technology services and solutions includes IT projects, managed services, cloud services, technology deployment, network monitoring and security, hardware and software procurement, and professional services.

SSI has been recognized multiple times for its dedication to uplifting the Central Ohio community as Corporate Caring award finalist and recipient, as well as one of the fastest growing companies, both locally and nationally, by Columbus Business First, FORTUNE and INC. magazines.