Central Illinois' IT Experts

Let’s consider why—explicitly—these evaluations are so important.

The Fundamentals of Data Backup

There are three elements that any modern backup strategy needs to incorporate to contribute to its success:

1. Incremental Backups: To retain as much data as possible in the event of a disaster, backups should be taken throughout the day—as frequently as every 15 minutes.
2. Fast Recovery: A backup solution needs to be able to restore data promptly and when called for so it can minimize the amount of downtime your business must contend with.
3. Regular Testing: A backup solution that doesn’t do its job could lead to a highly detrimental situation, so your backups should be tested regularly to identify and resolve any shortcomings.

Is Testing Your Backups Really That Important?

While you should always evaluate your technology to check for issues, your data backups make this even more important to do. Your business relies on the data it can access, and with so many ways that this data could be lost you need some way to effectively mitigate any scenario. A backup and data recovery service can provide you with the means to do so.

Of course, even if you have a BDR in place, testing is no less important to ensure that it works effectively if (or, more realistically, when) you need to use it. Plus, if it doesn’t work in your test, you have a chance to fix the problem before larger problems ensue.

Here at Decatur Computers Inc., we’re committed to helping our clients keep their operational data safe. If you would like our assistance with implementing and maintaining your backup—as well as your other technology solutions, give us a call at 217-475-0226 to learn more.

Threats Against Your Passwords

There are two different ways that an attacker will generally try to undermine your password:

1. Using trickery to fool your team members into sharing their password.
2. Using tools and malicious software to deduce and/or steal the correct credential.

Because of this, it is important that you ensure that all the passwords that your users have in place are strong enough to resist both methodologies.

Balancing Strength and Memorability

Considering this, it makes sense to keep the following ideas in mind as you put together your passwords and password policies:

• If a password cannot be guessed, stolen, or deduced, the hacker will likely try any and all possible combinations until they get a match in what is called a brute force attack.
• A password’s security and that same password’s resilience against being brute forced are two different things.

For an optimally secured password, you must consider both of these ideas.

Using This Information to Optimize Your Passwords

There are a few standbys when it comes to password best practices that are likely familiar to you:

• A password needs to be longer, ideally over 16 characters in length when allowed
• These characters need to include a combination of non-consecutive letters, numbers, and symbols
• These characters don’t represent any common words or numbers, private information, or any publicly accessible details

In addition to these precautions, we must consider how attackers break into passwords through brute force attacks. To help avoid that outcome, your passwords need to be sufficiently complex as well.

Approximately 40 percent of passwords in use only contain lowercase letters, which enterprising cybercriminals are well aware of and use to their advantage throughout their brute force attacks. They do so by first only checking combinations of exclusively lowercase letters, making their efforts much faster. Each additional variable adds to the difficulty the hacker will have decoding it, potentially convincing them to abandon their efforts before success.

Of course, you still need to remember these passwords, so if you can’t commit it to memory it isn’t going to help you, either.

As a result, an idea has come around that a truly ideal password is made up of a few randomized words with random alphanumeric substitution and capitalization sprinkled throughout them, padded out with symbols. After all, each variable we incorporate makes the hacker’s job that much more of a challenge and could foreseeably stymie any automated efforts to bypass the password long enough to render the search impracticable.

So, in light of this, a good password might look something similar to this:

[email protected]@gE;;;br|ghtEn;;;sc0v|llE++++

Taking this password into closer consideration, we can see why it would be nigh impossible to guess, without being impossible for a user to remember. However, its varied construction also means that a brute force method would have to go through an extensive list of permutations before eventually landing on this precise combination.

So, if you’re up to the challenge, it makes sense to consider making your passwords look something like this from here on out.

The Matter of Remembering These Passwords

Of course, using a separate example of a password like this for each account you have is a considerable feat—daunting for most people. A password manager can make it much simpler to keep to these best practices.

A password manager is a specialized software that securely stores your active passwords for you to use, locking them behind a single master password. That way, you can keep to password best practices without having to remember dozens of different passwords.

Whether you need assistance with your IT’s security or your company’s productivity, Decatur Computers Inc. is here to assist you. Find out what we can do by calling 217-475-0226.

Opportunists and COVID-19

Everytime something terrible happens, hackers are there to try and take advantage of the desperation people have. It is one of the saddest, most sickening truths that takes place in our digital society. As the pandemic stretches on, more and more scams have been reported that cover all types of parts of people’s lives. They include:

• Phishing - Phishing scams were here long before COVID-19 and will be here long after it isn’t a threat any longer. Essentially, scammers use emails that are disguised as being from a reputable and legitimate source (like the IRS or the CDC) to get people to take actions they wouldn’t normally take. Typically these messages come from what appears to be a financial institution, but they can literally come from anywhere. 
• Vishing - Vishing is phishing, but over the telephone. It’s the same strategy, but because the call seems like it is coming from a legitimate source, people will impulsively act. This can have dire consequences. 
• Smishing - Again, same concept, but this time the message is written via text message. Since people don’t think about the fact that people could be trying to fool them into giving over sensitive financial and personal information through text, they immediately act, leaving them scammed. 
• Pretexting - This is a less well-known scam, but it has been used a lot over the past year. Basically, someone will contact you directly claiming to be someone they aren’t. They typically claim to be from a government office, a financial institution, or a healthcare organization and ask for personal information to verify your identity.
• Spoofing - Spoofing can come from any medium, but in the COVID-19 era, we’ve seen a lot of spoofed social media profiles. The scammer will set up a profile with the name of a person you know, they will contact you out of the blue, but since you presumably know this person already, you will help them hack yourself. Spoofing can also be from email addresses, instant messaging accounts, and phone numbers. 
• Quid Pro Quo - This type of scam has been played up with so many people looking for any way to make ends meet. The scammer will promise the victim something in exchange for information. It may start out as a seemingly legitimate relationship, but after trust has been maintained, the victim is taken for data, money, or worse. 

What Can You Do?

Well, that’s not a simple answer, but there are plenty of things you should be doing to keep your private information out of other people’s hands. Firstly, you will always want to verify the identity of anyone that asks you for anything online. This means anyone. It can be your boss, your partner, your parents, anyone. These days scammers will do anything to get a hold of a little piece of you to take a lot from you. Verify, verify, verify.

Everyone that has an online life should understand the potential pitfalls that are out there. This perspective, along with adhering to best practices can go a long way toward keeping your personal information out of the hands of scammers.

If you would like some help coming up with a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy for your company that includes thorough training and testing, call the IT professionals at Decatur Computers Inc. today at 217-475-0226.