The Importance of Secure Remote Access
Cybersecurity needs to be a serious concern for your business, regardless of your size or the industry you belong to.
Despite what the news focuses on, attack don’t just happen to the Targets and Home Depots of the world. On the contrary, over 60% of cyberattacks in 2014 targeted small and medium-sized businesses. And with over 300 million new pieces of malware created last year alone, there’s no shortage of threats ready to strike your network.
So, there are a lot of threats out there, but what does it mean for you if you’re actually hit by a cyberattack?
Well, it could close you down for good. Really. It’ll cost you an average of $150 per compromised file to recover from a security breach, and thousands of files are usually compromised in a single attack, so you’re looking at a cleanup that will run you six or even seven figures. That’s enough of an expense to put 55% of SMBs out of business within just 6 months of suffering significant data loss.
The Risk of Remote Workers
Smartphones and the cloud have made remote workers more of a viable option than ever before.
But the convenience of remote access can come at a steep cost if you’re not taking the proper steps to protect yourself from cybercriminals.
Remember, when you can get on a public connection at McDonalds or Starbucks or wherever without a password, that means anyone else can get on that connection, too. Maybe even someone who knows how to turn that shared connection into a golden opportunity for stealing your data.
Employees working on a home network with a network security key helps, but even that is riskier than office workstations using a local connection.
How can you ensure that your remote workers aren’t putting the integrity of your data secure? Remember, as we stated earlier, all it takes is one successful attack from the hundreds of millions of threats that are out there to shut you down for good. It is absolutely necessary to keep your network secure.
The Solution: Virtual Private Networks
What you need is a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
A VPN uses a combination of dedicated connections, virtual tunneling, and thorough encryption protocols to make sure remote users accessing business data don’t put that data at risk of being compromised.
Basically, what a VPN does it provides your remote workers the same level of security they’d get with your office’s local connection, even if they’re actually on the other side of the country.
Give us a call at (866) 828-6674 or send a message over to info@offsiteIT.com if you’d like any more information about setting up a VPN and our other IT services.
