Do the terms “hacker” or “cyber attack” catch your attention?  They should and if they don’t then you should definitely read “Experts to business owners: Beware of hackers” by Charles McChesney of The Post-Standard. While there are endless attempts from cyber criminals to compromise your network, there are ways to significantly mitigate these attempts. 

A fundamental approach and best practice is implementing and enforcing the “principle of least privilege” at your company.  Employees will be limited to only parts of the network and to applications they need to perform their daily work functions.  This means employees cannot install suspicious software or manipulate system settings.  This reduces the risks of viruses entering your network such as “crimeware” that captures keystrokes similar to what happened to the Central New York Business owner in the article. 

Be proactive, remove administrator rights from your end users and manage the permissions standard users require through automated policies.