By Denny Dean, CISO, CyberSecurity Practice Director

MARCH 19, 2020 – At Focus Technology, IT security is always top of mind. If you’re implementing telework options, consider these six key recommendations:

• • Update VPNs, network infrastructure devices, and devices being used to remote into work environments with the latest software patches and security configurations

Zero Day Exploit – A recent flaw discovered, that is leveraged by a hacker or “threat actor” before a patch or preventative measure can be made available by the manufacturer of the system or software. The bugs or flaws are unknown, go on undetected, and can continue to be exploited for many weeks, months or potentially years. Some security researchers will responsibly report such flaws to the company responsible, giving them enough lead time to pinpoint and resolve any such issues with software updates before going public with the information. Keep up with system patches, and make sure to look for network and traffic anomalies in your security management consoles.

More of the web is encrypted today than ever before. Use of SSL certificates is on the rise and with good reason. Concerns over user and data privacy are a large part of the push to an encrypted web. The good news is that encrypted web traffic does in fact make snooping a lot harder to do. The bad news is that writers of malicious software have also picked up on the trend, making malware detection and web usage compliance much harder for system and network admins alike.

Below is a list of the top 5 trends we see in the small to medium business space today. Many organizations can benefit greatly from doing a few small, but simple tasks to improve their security posture.

As you may know from past posts (read here), Focus has partnered up with Palo Alto Networks. Palo Alto Networks is a next-generation security company, leading a new era in cyber security by safely enabling all applications and preventing advanced threats from achieving their objectives for tens of thousands of organizations around the world. Palo Alto is one of the fastest growing security companies in the market because of their deep expertise, commitment to innovation, and game-changing security platform focused on bringing an end to the era of breaches by uniquely integrating their Next-Generation Firewall, Advanced Endpoint Protection, and Threat Intelligence Cloud.