Top corporate IT cybersecurity tips and tricks from Ben Climer and Safe Network Solutions: Understanding the vulnerabilities of a system and planning for weaknesses is a critical piece of securing your environment. Our team will examine physical safeguards to data, threats to your systems, personnel weaknesses, and data backups. Knowing multiple layers are in place and functioning is vital to your network security. When software, people, hardware, or vendors change, an opportunity exists for security gaps to appear. During our assessment, we will verify comprehensive protocols are in place to remove employee and vendor access from your network once their job is complete. Is cybersecurity insurance in place? Are the policies adequate for your risk? Additionally, validating protocols are followed with logs and documentation is necessary to ensure protocols properly followed. Discover additional information at Ben Climer.
Ben Climer has been in the Service Team Lead and Solution Architect role for 5 years. His favorite aspect of SNS is the great team we have, which allows us to deliver excellent service to our clients. When there’s a challenging problem at hand, Ben is the one we can count on for complete answers and elegant solutions. Ben built his first computer at the age of 8, started building web applications at 12 and before joining SNS, went on to compete in National Computer Repair competitions. He worked for HP as well as music row clients prior to joining SNS. Outside of work, Ben enjoys working on cars and traveling.
With over 10 years of work experience in the IT industry, Ben Climer is a passionate and skilled CTO at Safe Network Solutions, a leading provider of network security and cloud solutions. Ben Climer has a strong background in technical sales, network administration, and solution architecture. His mission is to deliver innovative, reliable, and cost-effective solutions that meet the needs and expectations of our clients. Collaboration, learning, and excellence, and striving to create a culture of trust, empowerment, accountability within the team are Ben Climer’s goals.
As the CTO, Ben Climer is responsible for overseeing the technical direction, strategy, and vision of the company, as well as mentoring a team of talented engineers and consultants. He has successfully implemented and troubleshooted various projects involving Hyper-V, Azure, Office 365, AWS, and wireless point-to-point technologies, ensuring high performance, security, and scalability. He also participated in various CTF competitions, demonstrating proficiency in cloud and cybersecurity. Ben Climer enjoys staying updated on the latest trends and developments in the IT field, and sharing his knowledge and insights with the community.
Now you should be able to discern what information is in a secure place and what needs to be backed up, encrypted or moved to a safer spot. You might realize, for example, that you want a dedicated, stand-alone computer for your payroll program and banking activities. When you’re done, you’ll have a better handle on the next steps to fully secure your systems. When outdated computers are phased out or an employee leaves the company, you can’t just throw the equipment into the trash and call it a day. You have to make a concerted effort to completely destroy all the data on that hard drive, whether the computer will eventually be junked or repurposed for another employee. Otherwise, you’ll always wonder if that information could come back to haunt you someday.
Enable HTTPs on Your Website. HTTPs websites have an SSL/TLS Certificate installed onto their servers. This certificate will encrypt all data transmitted from browser to server, whether that’s personal or financial info that’s submitted through the site or the contents of the webpage, from eavesdroppers (e.g. malicious parties, government surveillance). SSL Certificates can also tie your brand identity to your web presence, helping visitors know that your site is actually run by your company and not an imposter (i.e. phishing site). EV SSL makes this extra clear by turning the address bar green and prominently displaying your company name.
Install Anti-Virus Protection. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways you can keep your personal information, as well as company information, secure while traveling. In addition to using a trusted brand of security, make sure that you regularly update this software as new versions become available. Just like your anti-virus software, you should keep your operating system as current as possible. This also goes for apps on your phone; take special care to update apps that you regularly use to conduct financial or personal business.
Learn about Phishing Scams – be very suspicious of emails, phone calls, and flyers. We recently blogged that phishing scams are nastier than ever this year. In a phishing scheme attempt, the attacker poses as someone or something the sender is not to trick the recipient into divulging credentials, clicking a malicious link, or opening an attachment that infects the user’s system with malware, trojan, or zero-day vulnerability exploit. This often leads to a ransomware attack. In fact, 90% of ransomware attacks originate from phishing attempts.
Ben Climer and Safe Network Solutions on data breaches: For business organizations: a data breach can have a devastating effect on an organization’s reputation and financial bottom line. Organizations such as Equifax, Target, and Yahoo, for example, have been the victims of a data breach. And today, many people associate/remember those companies for the data breach incident itself, rather than their actual business operations. For government organizations: compromised data can mean exposing highly confidential information to foreign parties. Military operations, political dealings, and details on essential national infrastructure can pose a major threat to a government and its citizens.