Michael Joseph Pertuit cybersecurity and electronics advices today? In the event that your company does experience a cyberattack, waste no time responding. Quarantine the equipment that might have been infected, and clean it out. Notify business partners and contacts who might have been indirectly affected by the attack. Figure out if any of your customers’ payment information has been compromised. If you don’t have IT staff, you should definitely hire a professional to analyze the problem and resecure your system. You also need to report the incident immediately to local authorities, the Internet Crime Complaint Center and possibly the FBI. You might want to just forge ahead and put the whole ordeal behind you, but reporting the crime will protect you and other businesses from further attacks. It’ll help law enforcement gain clues about the perpetrators and how they operate. They might not be brought to justice immediately — or ever — but it’s an important step.

Michael Pertuit on ransomware attacks: Backing up your data regularly is an overlooked step in personal online security. The top IT and security managers follow a simple rule called the 3-2-1 backup rule. Essentially, you will keep three copies of your data on two different types of media (local and external hard drive) and one copy in an off-site location (cloud storage). If you become a victim of ransomware or malware, the only way to restore your data is to erase your systems and restore with a recently performed backup. Don’t use a public Wi-Fi without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). By using a VPN, the traffic between your device and the VPN server is encrypted. This means it’s much more difficult for a cybercriminal to obtain access to your data on your device. Use your cell network if you don’t have a VPN when security is important.

Michael Pertuit on internet security: Some companies allow their employees to use their personal phones to conduct business. It’s great for business to increase productivity and efficiency but it leaves businesses vulnerable to an attack since phones can be hacked and used to access your corporate network. A BYOD policy will help to educate employees on the use of mobile technology and how to mitigate the risk of an attack. An incident response strategy allows your business to stay ahead of an attack. You can never be sure you are 100% secure so it is always best to have a plan in case you are a victim of a cyber-attack. This will ensure that if you do have an attack, you can respond quickly enough to keep attackers from getting hold of sensitive data and alert the press or customers should the attack be larger than expected. You should also ensure there is someone responsible for handling the response plan.

Michael Pertuit about data breach: 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.

VPN connections: You can protect multiple devices, Most paid VPNs (and you shouldn’t really use a free VPN) provide multiple simultaneous connections. So you should be able to protect all your devices, be it a computer, smartphone, tablet, and even smart TVs and gaming consoles, at the same time. How many simultaneous connections a VPN allows varies from service to service, but you can choose one that best suits your needs. Between three and seven VPN connections are generally what you get from most. See even more information on Michael Pertuit.