We recently asked around 3,000 of our customers and prospects to tell us about some of their biggest endpoint security concerns. Specifically, we wanted to know how secure these IT professionals felt about the data on their users’ endpoint devices.
Most organisations indicated they were using some kind of endpoint backup provider. However, this did not stop them from expressing concerns, and in many cases indicating their intention to look for a more complete data protection solution at the device level.
Cybersecurity and compliance
The main pain point the respondents identified was the threat of compliance issues, fines, or threats to their business’ reputation from security incidents.
Other recurring themes in respondents answers were:
Inability to deal with the latest evasive threats
Limited visibility into what’s happening on my endpoints
Most of our respondents indicated that they did not lack the specialist technical skills or capacity needed to deal with escalated threats within their teams. Instead, the concerns were focused on the ability of endpoint providers to stay ahead of threats, and having the visibility to deal with them.
The right cybersecurity tools
Our survey results indicate that SMBs and mid-size enterprises in the UK know they are at risk from new, unknown, and evasive threats such as unknown malware, ransomware, financial, and other spyware that can bypass automated security barriers. Having best-in-class tools in place to quickly identify, analyse, and respond to known, unknown, and evasive threats – all without straining your limited time and resource – is vital.
If you would like to speak with a member of the team with further questions about user cybersecurity awareness or Kaspersky’s solutions in the meantime, please call your account manager or 01274 396 213 and we will be able to help you.
Great technology exists in many companies. But in this new era of remote working and home working, users must be equipped with the cybersecurity skills to use it confidently. The right cybersecurity training delivers that, and also increases security awareness amongst your employees, boosts morale and contributes to a better work culture.
Just like other training, learning cybersecurity skills is less effective if courses are old-fashioned, lengthy, technical and uninspiring. Security awareness training should be continuous, with a clear programme structure, and smaller step-by-step lessons that stimulate the necessary behavior and motivate your employees to detect and report real attacks.
Giving your employees the freedom to perform will have widespread benefits for your business – well-trained employees safeguard your company by reducing security incidents, improving uptime and efficiency across your organisation. It can also serve to reduce shadow IT, and inspire efficient working practices, file sharing and collaborative methods.
How Kaspersky ASAP breaks down barriers
Unlike ‘ordinary’ training content, Kaspersky ASAP is built around over 20 years of experience and a specialist skillset in security.
Kaspersky know precisely which skills users should develop in order to behave safely and safeguard your business; and these topics are built directly into training content, divided by topics and levels. It makes training comprehensive, yet engaging for learners of all levels.
This overcomes a number of important training barriers. Read on to find out how.
Want to find out more?
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more or request a free trial, please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
In a series of forthcoming articles and resources, Complete IT Systems and Kaspersky will be guiding your business through how to build your users’ cybersecurity awareness. The next article in the series focuses on how user awareness can affect business finances.
Human factors in cybersecurity
There are a lot of stats out there about cyberthreats – we recognise that. But specifically for small businesses in the UK, there are four in particular that should be noted:
60% of employees have confidential data on their corporate devices (financial data, email database, etc.)
30% of employees admit that they share their work PC’s login and password details with colleagues.
Last year, 43% of cyberattacks targeted small businesses
For SMBs, the average annual financial impact of data breaches caused by inappropriate IT resource usage by employees is around £75,000 ($98K). On top of this, the physical loss of company owned devices or media costs a further £80,000 ($105K).
Close to home
In other words, these aren’t random global statistics about data breaches targeting the likes of Google, Facebook or other household names. These are real data breaches happening to small and medium sized UK firms.
In fact, in the UK, the Information Commissioners’ Office reported that 88% of data breaches in the country over the past two years were caused by human error, rather than by hacker attacks*.
Take action – get your users clued up on cybersecurity
The stats show the harsh reality that, completely unwittingly, users are directly or indirectly responsible for the vast majority of company data breaches in the UK.
Read this guide from Kaspersky to start managing the human factor in your company’s cybersecurity strategy.
Want to find out more?
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more or request a free trial, please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
References
“Sorting out a Digital Clutter”, Kaspersky, 2019.
“Measuring & Managing the Cyber Risks to Business Operations”, Ponemon Institute LLC, Dec 2018
“2019 Data Breach Investigations Report” Verizon
“On the Money: Growing IT Security Budgets to Protect Digital Transformation Initiatives”, Kaspersky, 2018
In a series of forthcoming articles and resources, Complete IT Systems and Kaspersky will be guiding your business through how to build your users’ cybersecurity awareness.
Educate, protect and empower your users
According to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, a staggering 90% of cyber-incidents are caused by human error*. Let that sink in for a moment.
Thanks to advanced phishing filters and firewalls, many organisations have better security protection. So today, the first point of vulnerability in the cybersecurity chain is your own users. They provide an entry point into IT systems, with human error now accounting for the majority of cyber incidents.
Your organisation could lose significant revenue, simply through a lack of security awareness. In fact, 82% of employers report a shortage of cybersecurity skills. Educating your users about cybersecurity issues now – to change their attitudes and behavior – will protect your business and IT systems.
The freedom to perform
While the South American jungle is / may be an exaggeration, the fact is that IT departments’ old comfort blankets of secure office LAN networks and VPNs are becoming more and more obsolete.
Great technology exists in many companies, so people must have the cybersecurity skills to use it confidently. The right training delivers that, and also increases security awareness amongst your employees, boosts morale and contributes to a better work culture.
Just like other training, learning cybersecurity skills is less effective if courses are lengthy, technical and uninspiring. Security awareness training should be continuous, with a clear programme structure, and smaller step-by-step lessons that stimulate the necessary behavior and motivate your employees to detect and report real attacks.
Giving your users the freedom to perform will have widespread benefits for your business – well-trained employees safeguard your company by reducing security incidents, improving uptime and efficiency across your organisation.
With Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform (ASAP), you benefit from more effective computer-based interactive training, which can significantly decrease the number of human-related cybersecurity incidents in an organisation.
Want to find out more?
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more or request a free trial, please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
Check out this short video to see ASAP in action!
*References
https://go.kaspersky.com/Awareness_Guide_Landing_Page.html – Analysis of data breach reports filed with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
We’ve all seen the news about cyber attacks costing businesses of all sizes millions of £, not to mention the reputational damage that comes with losing customers’ data. Choosing the right security solutions can be time-consuming, and in a crowded marketplace, it is not always easy to evaluate the best solution for your business.
Join Complete IT Systems and Kaspersky for our live webinar, in association with BrightTALK, on 17th September at 14:00.
During this webinar, Darryl Wiffen from our mutual customer Caledonian Consumer Finance will describe his journey with Complete IT Systems and Kaspersky, and what they were looking for from their solution provider and security platform.
You will also be hearing from Mark Olding – Pre-Sales Manager (Kaspersky Cyber-Security Expert) who will explain and demonstrate the benefits of:
Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud
Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus
Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365
The cloud is a powerful tool, so long as you know how to control it. With NEW Cloud Discovery (part of Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud), you can:
Know which cloud services your employees are using on their work devices
Block prohibited cloud use automatically
Uncover new potentially malicious cloud services
Cloud Discovery isn’t the only life-changing tool in the Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud arsenal. With SharePoint and Teams now in common usage, the need for a dedicated cybersecurity solution for Microsoft Office 365 has never been greater. That’s why we’ve added Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365.
Join the webinar and see for yourself how much easier life can be with the right cybersecurity technologies.
Speakers:
Darryl Wiffen – IT Support Technician, Caledonian Consumer Finance Ltd
Mark Olding – Pre-Sales Manager at Kaspersky
Kevin Roy – Technical Director at Complete IT Systems
Dominic Ryles – Partner Account Manager at Kaspersky
If you can’t join the live session, register anyway and we’ll send you a link to the recording after the live event.
Most businesses have put time and effort into educating users on the threat of dodgy email. But what can you do when cybercriminals and spammers are constantly changing their tactics? When email is the number one malware vector for business , relying on default or built-in security settings to protect you is risky. This short video demonstrates how Kaspersky’s next-generation security technologies can make your Microsoft Office 365 mail even easier to secure and manage.
Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365 helps your business to detect and block spam and malicious email before it becomes a problem – without slowing productivity or accidentally deleting legitimate traffic. Like Microsoft Office 365, it’s hosted in the cloud. And like all Kaspersky solutions, it’s built on the world’s most tested, most awarded security.
This short video (1:47) demonstrates how Kaspersky’s next-generation security technologies can make your Microsoft Office 365 mail even easier to secure and manage.
Want to find out more?
You can read more about the Kaspersky Cloud, including a 6 month FREE trialhere.
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
In our previous article, we looked at the benefits of the Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud. Here, we look in more detail at some of the key features of the products.
Prevent threats and keep your business running
The Kaspersky solution offers endpoint protection from the most tested, most awarded security vendor. You can protect Windows desktops and file servers, Mac OS workstations, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, as well offering your users secure Microsoft Office 365 communication and collaboration platforms.
Compensate for lack of IT resources and budget
Hosted in the cloud. No need for hardware and software procurement, provisioning and maintenance
Instant protection with pre-defined security policies developed by our professionals
Available on a monthly subscription to free up financial resources
Gain cloud visibility
Shadow IT discovery to reveal uncontrolled sharing of corporate data in the cloud as well as users wasting time on social media and messengers.
Block user access to unnecessary or unauthorised cloud resources, keeping your data secure and your colleagues focused and productive.
How to get started – try it FREE for 6 months!
To support remote working in this challenging time, we’re also offering 6 months’ FREE protection with the very latest version of Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365.
This extends protection for SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, securing all collaboration and messaging channels within Microsoft Office 365.
Sign up NOW for a FREE 6-month license and take protecting remote workers and business data off your to-do list.
Want to find out more?
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
As collaboration tools become more and more fundamental to team collaboration, and by extension, company success, alongside their benefits, cloud solutions for file storage and document or project management can cause many problems for IT departments.
Smaller businesses rarely invest in high-cost collaboration tools, opting instead for cheaper — or, better still, free — utilities. For better or worse, they have plenty of choices. However, failure to consider the security implications of using such tools can end up costing SMBs far more than they budgeted for.
In this article, we share some tips and best practices for making sure that your users can work as productively – and as securely – as possible.
Document collaboration tools
Many services allow small teams to edit documents simultaneously. They’re not just text tools, though; using them, team members can jointly develop graphical interfaces, diagrams, source code, and much more as well. It is handy, after all. However, before using such a service, it is worth understanding exactly how it works: how it stores your information, who has access to it, what security settings are available. Leaving work files publicly accessible is always a bad idea. Even if you are not concerned about information leakage, an intruder could gain access and make their own changes to your project documentation.
Google Docs or Microsoft Teams, OneDrive or Sharepoint provide the most vivid examples. People often share documents through those platforms, using a direct link without any restrictions. That means search engines can index them, and therefore pretty much anyone can see them. Complete strangers have found all sorts of confidential information in those docs: employees’ personal data, lists of customers including contact details, and even payroll records.
What to do: Use only services in which you can hide documents from prying eyes, or that at least give a clear explanation of how documents are stored. Do not forget to configure access rights — the ability to do so is a vital consideration. So, if you use Google Docs for work purposes, restrict access, granting it only to people you share documents with, and do not forget to revoke it if they no longer need it.
Cloud file storage
Another type of service that you should treat with caution is cloud file storage. Need to transfer a large amount of information? No problem — just upload it to the cloud and send the recipient a link. That neatly avoids any e-mail size limits. But many file-sharing services have no protection at all; and, again, files can pop up in the search results of random strangers.
Even if a service has protection, you need to turn security settings up to the max. People often sign up, upload data to the cloud, and forget about it. But passwords can leak. One hackers even stole passwords from Dropbox, not to mention smaller services.
What to do: Choose a reliable file-sharing service that supports two-factor authentication. Once you put data in the cloud, do not forget about it, and if you’re no longer using a file for work, delete it. Settle on one service for sharing files; using more than one invites confusion.
Project-management environments
Overall, these platforms allow workflow participants to communicate, share files, and systematize projects. If you use one to discuss business strategies or transfer files, it is important to know not only who can see them today, but also who might be able to later. Some cloud platforms make everything visible to everyone by default. Users can hide items, but odds are they won’t remember to 100% of the time; the default usually stands. What’s more, if someone gets access to a project, it is likely they will gain access to the entire project history, which is not always desirable.
Companies often grant access to such environments to contractors or freelancers, who may be working for you today and for a competitor tomorrow. Not to mention dismissed employees, who might have time to download an archive before you revoke their permissions.
What to do: Regulate project access rights, restricting those rights to work-related files only, for all parties. Use separate communication environments for employees and external people (contractors, customers). And do not forget to revoke access for former employees and freelancers promptly.
Additional tips
Remember that all services may have vulnerabilities (which might be undiscovered when you start working with them). In addition, many services have client apps with their own problems. Therefore, we recommend that you stick to the following principles:
Before you start working with a service, carefully study its settings and data processing rules, as well as read how people have reviewed it in the context of security.
Your dedicated IT expert or team, if you have one, must clearly understand what services you use, how they are configured, and who is handling their administration.
If you have no dedicated specialist, appoint a responsible party for each service to ensure that the client app is updated promptly any time a vulnerability is found, that passwords are changed in the event of a leak, and that access rights are issued and revoked as and when required.
Any service used to share a link or file can potentially be a malware distribution channel. Therefore, every device on which these tools are used needs a reliable security solution.
What’s the solution?
With Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365, your company can protect Exchange Online, OneDrive files, SharePoint files, and Teams files against malware, phishing, spam, and other threats.
Click here to view the full datasheet, or watch the short video below.
Want to find out more?
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
Although it may be tempting to think that with data in the cloud your business isn’t susceptible to data loss, it’s still vital to add an additional security layer to protect email from spam, phishing, ransomware and other advanced cyber threats. In fact, nowadays malware is usually sent via email and hosted on cloud storage platforms.
Protecting even a cloud-oriented business from known and unknown threats is therefore critical in order to instantly stop the spread of malicious software, phishing, ransomware, spam and business email compromise (BEC) – and best of all requires no high-tech skills.
What’s the solution?
With Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365, your company can protect Exchange Online, OneDrive files, SharePoint files, and Teams files against malware, phishing, spam, and other threats.
Make use of the most sophisticated technologies for your security and at the same time enjoy a quick start thanks to predefined policies and auto configuration.
Get a 6 month FREE trial!
To support remote working in this challenging time, we’re offering 6 months’ FREE protection with the very latest version of Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365. This extends protection for SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, securing all collaboration and messaging channels within Microsoft Office 365.
Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365 uses advanced heuristics, machine learning and other next-generation technologies to protect your communication and collaboration processes from ransomware, malicious attachments, spam, phishing (including Business Email Compromise) and unknown threats.
Sign up NOW for a FREE 6-month license and take protecting remote workers off your to-do list.
Click here to view the full datasheet, or watch the short video below.
Want to find out more?
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
Malware and email messages are, unfortunately, the same as bread to butter or hands to gloves. The two go hand in hand. In fact, the connection is so acute that it’s been found that over 90% of all known malware is delivered into companies via email.
And there’s even worse news for IT managers and systems administrators. Here’s some of the main points from the Cofense State of Phishing Defence report:
The average user / employee doesn’t go two full days between receiving phishing messages
More than 50% of phishing messages have the word “invoice” in the subject line
21% of malicious emails carry harmful attachments or phishing-related malware
Given that this data was gathered over 135 million simulations, 800,000 emails and 50,000 actual phishing campaigns targeting companies in 23 industries, the threat is obviously a real one.
Protect your business email with a 6 month FREE Kaspersky trial!
To support remote working in this challenging time, we’re offering 6 months’ FREE protection with the very latest version of Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365. This extends protection for SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, securing all collaboration and messaging channels within Microsoft Office 365.
Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365 uses advanced heuristics, machine learning and other next-generation technologies to protect your communication and collaboration processes from ransomware, malicious attachments, spam, phishing (including Business Email Compromise) and unknown threats.
Sign up NOW for a FREE 6-month license and take protecting remote workers off your to-do list.
Why Kaspersky?
Prevent threats and keep your business running
Endpoint protection from the most tested, most awarded security vendor
Protect Windows desktops and file servers, Mac OS workstations, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets
Secure Microsoft Office 365 communication and collaboration
Want to find out more?
As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.
To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.
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To support remote working in this challenging time, we’re also offering 6 months’ FREE protection with the very latest version of Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365.
