Month: September 2024

The Complexity of IT Security

Modern businesses – of all sizes – are becoming increasingly vulnerable to security breaches even as they enable their workforces with state-of-the-art technologies.

• Cyber attacks are up 100% since 2010.

• Cyber attacks can be costly. The average time to resolve a cyber attack is 24 days at an average cost of $591,780, or nearly $25,000 per day.

• The most costly cyber-crimes are caused by malicious code, denial of service, stolen or hijacked devices, and malevolent insiders.

Threat 1: Data Loss & Leakage

• Unintentional distribution
  of sensitive data:
  • financial
  • employee
  • customer data
  • intellectual property
• Due to:
  • loss or theft of laptops or mobile phones.
  • electronic transmissions, such as unencrypted emails, IM, webmail and file transfer tools, hacking, virus

   

 

Threat 2: Denial of Service Attacks

• DoS attacks flood a network with more traffic than it can handle, consuming bandwidth or server resources.
• Distributed DOS attacks use multiple systems to launch the offensive, making them difficult to shut down.
• DDOS attacks are growing in size – to more than 50GBps in 2012 ‒ and last more than 30 hours, according to data from Prolexic.

 

 

 

 

Threat 3: Malware

• Malicious software (aka malware) is unwanted software installed without consent.
• Examples include:
  • viruses
  • worms
  • Trojan horses
  • spyware
  • Botnets, Zombie

   

 

Threat 4: Phishing/Social Engineering

• Cyber criminals use phishing and “social engineering” schemes to trick people into sharing personal information, such as:
  • account information
  • credit card data
  • social security numbers
  • passwords
• Phishing  and social engineering are done typically with links to fill-in forms from:
  • e-mails
  • Websites
  • social media

Threat 5: Human Error/Malevolence

• More than 50% of security problems are due to employees or IT staff inadvertently:
  • failing to follow procedure
  • being careless
  • lacking expertise
• Insiders or former insiders, such as disgruntled or malicious employees or contractors can be dangerous attackers because they know the organization’s:
  • security codes  and measures
  • computers and applications
  • actions that will cause the most damage

   

Understanding Data-Centric Security

Before you even think about technology, you need to determine who will be responsible for security. The development and communication of your security strategy is critical.

• Understand present, potential and future risks

• Employee vulnerabilities
• Internet, cloud vulnerabilities
• LAN vulnerabilities
• Premises security

• Implement
  • Minimum security codes and measures
  • Define business and personal computer and applications use
  • Define consequences for violating company security policies
  • Educate users

https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/cyber-attacks-on-rise.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/complexity-of-it-security.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/information-leakage.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/denial-of-service-attacks.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/malware.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/phishing-social-engineering.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/human-error-malevolence.jpg

Internet Security|Webmaster

How to increase or decrease your spam settings and how to add users to the blacklist or whitelist.

Most users will just use steps 1 through 5. Step 6 is for advanced configuration, should only be used by advanced users.

1. Type: https://yourdomainname.com:2083 into your preferred Internet browser.
2. Enter your Control Panel username into the Username field.
3. Enter your password into the Password field.
4. Click Log in.

To enable SpamAssassin:

• Simply click the Enable SpamAssassin button on the SpamAssassin home screen.

This function automatically deletes messages that meet or exceed the score limit. Activate this function by clicking the Auto-Delete Spam button under the Filters heading.

WARNING – Email tagged as spam will be deleted completely from the server.

When you click Configure SpamAssassin, you can add email addresses that should be filtered automatically by typing the address into the “blacklist_from” box. A whitelist can be created in the same way at the bottom of the page. It is also possible to specify scores that SpamAssassin should use for each particular test.

 

 

SpamAssassin examines every email message for spam characteristics, then assigns it an overall score. Enter the score required for a message to be considered spam.

5 is the default setting, this is not very aggressive.
1 is very aggressive and in most cases, this setting is never used.

We recommend, adjusting 1 point setting each day until you achieve the desired result.

 

This feature allows you to add emails and/or domains to blacklist (spam, blocked) or whitelist (clean, allowed through).

Note: You can always email support@globalit.com for assistance with black or white listing of emails and IP addresses.

Enter addresses whose email is often allowed past the spam filter, but from whom you do not wish to receive email.

You may use * as a wildcard for multiple characters, or ? as a single-character wildcard.

• user@example.com — Blacklists a single email address.
• *@example.com — Blacklists all the addresses at example.com.
• ?ser@example.com — For example, User@example.com would be blacklisted, but AUser@example.com would not be blacklisted.

By default, 5 text boxes appear, allowing you to add 5 addresses. To add more than 5 addresses:

1. Fill in the first 5 text boxes.
2. Click Save.

When you return to the page, more text boxes will appear.

 

Enter addresses whose email is often blocked, but from whom you wish to receive email.

You may use * as a wildcard for multiple characters, or ? as a single-character wildcard.

• user@example.com — Whitelists a single email address.
• *@example.com — Whitelists all the email addresses at example.com.
• ?ser@example.com — For example, User@example.com would be added to the whitelist while AUser@example.com would not be added.

By default, 5 text boxes appear, allowing you to add 5 addresses. To add more than 5 addresses:

1. Fill in the first 5 text boxes.
2. Click Save.

When you return to the page, more text boxes will appear.

 

Remember:

• Click Save to store the configuration changes.
• A whitelisted address is automatically allowed past the filter.
• A blacklisted address will automatically be filtered by SpamAssassin.

 

https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/enable_spamassasin.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/cpanel_log_in.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/spamassasin2.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/enable_spamassasin1.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/spamassasin.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/cpanel_log_in1.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/control_panel_login.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/access_spamassasin.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/auto-delete.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/changing_score.jpg|https://info.globalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/configure_spamassasin.jpg

Internet Security|Webmaster