Washington Works Blog

Chances are pretty good that, by this point, you’ve heard of burnout—maybe you’ve even suffered from it before yourself—but, just in case you’re a remarkably lucky human being, it’s the phenomenon where your employees become disengaged to the point where their performance suffers. While this isn’t good in any facet of your business, it can be especially damaging in terms of your security.

Insurance is a great asset, should you ever need it… including where your business technology is concerned. If you weren’t aware, there is a form of insurance—cyber insurance—that you can purchase in case your business suffers from a data breach.

Is this additional form of insurance worth the investment? Absolutely.

When we think about cybersecurity, we usually think about protecting our computers from viruses, right?

I’d imagine a few of our older readers remember a time when you would go to the store and buy antivirus software that came in a big brightly-colored box with a CD in it each year.

As you probably already know, things aren’t as simple anymore.

Anyone who has a mailbox or an email knows all about junk mail. We all receive Publisher’s Clearing House entries, calls about your car’s extended warranty, promotions for items and events that you swore that you discontinued by typing “STOP”, and just needless spam that you waste your time going through and deleting. We receive unsolicited messages every single day.

Mobile devices demand a special type of attention in order to ensure security. You want to ensure that your devices are protected as well as possible, but you also need to ensure that this does not come at the expense of your employees’ productivity or efficiency. We’ve put together a list of common security issues you might encounter when securing your mobile devices, as well as a couple of practices you can implement to work toward an adequate level of cybersecurity for your mobile infrastructure.

If you are a frequent reader of our blog, you know all about phishing scams. They are emails and messages sent that are designed to extort money and gain access to computers and networks for nefarious purposes. The popular IT support company Geek Squad, a subsidiary of Best Buy, is the latest company caught up in such a scam. Let’s take a look at how the scam works and how you can avoid becoming its next victim.

Your network security is of the utmost importance to your business for numerous, hopefully obvious reasons. However, there are a few errors that are easy enough to make that could easily be the proverbial monkey wrench in the works. Let’s go over what these network security faux pas look like, so you can resolve them more effectively (and don’t worry, we’ll discuss that, too).

Unfortunately, cybersecurity is a lot easier to reinforce in the office than it is when your team members are working remotely—and even then, it can be a serious challenge to maintain. However, let’s focus on the remote worker’s situation for a few moments and review a few best practices that can help a remote worker stay secure.

Phishing attacks can be scary to deal with, especially since it is not unheard of for staff members to not even know they are looking at one. To make sure your staff can identify and respond to phishing attacks in an appropriate way, we’ve put together this short guide to help you along the way.

With many businesses’ increased reliance on their information systems and other IT, they need to do everything they can to keep those systems up and running and secure. This not only includes rolling out security systems that support that goal, it also demands they take the action necessary to keep these systems secure. Let’s look at four things you need to do to keep your business’ IT as secure as possible. 

With cybersecurity a priority for every business that depends on their IT, there are a lot of different strategies being utilized out there to keep threats off of networks and data safe. One of the most advanced strategies being used today is enlisting a service that runs a Security Operations Center (SOC). Today, we’ll investigate what a SOC is and how it works to keep threats at bay. 

How often do you find yourself stressing out about who has access to which data or internal resources on your company network? What about who has access to open the front door of your office or who has access to important physical resources within your building? Ensuring the security of your business’ assets is critical, and access control tools can help your company ensure that only authorized individuals have access to specific parts of your organization’s infrastructure, be it physical or digital.

Getting your staff to care about your organizational network and data security may be more difficult than you might think, but it’s not a lost cause. Today, keeping your business’ organizational security strong relies heavily on your staff’s willingness to follow the right practices, so today we thought we’d give you seven tips to get your people to care about security

In the business world, it can be difficult to know who to trust in regard to cybersecurity. In many cases, businesses are simply opting to not trust any device, friend or foe, when it comes to their data security. This type of zero-trust model is slowly becoming the norm, and it’s one that your organization might consider moving forward.

Cyberattacks can cost businesses a lot of money. They’re also more prevalent today than ever before. It seems you can’t go a couple of news cycles without hearing about some organization that has been hacked or scammed and it’s resulted in the sensitive data the organization holds being sold online, vast operational downtime, or worse. For this reason, many organizations have deliberately built up their cybersecurity infrastructure, enhanced their policies, and invested in training to ensure that they aren’t the next victim. Unfortunately, this attention doesn’t always work. 

Hopefully, you’re aware of how important cybersecurity is today—if not, make sure you come back to our blog often for more information on that. The Internet, for all its benefits, can easily be the source of serious threats. With today’s youth growing more connected, these threats can easily target them… making it all the more important to start teaching cybersecurity awareness and best practices early. 

Penetration testing is a topic that you might often hear and read about on the Internet, but you might not know exactly what it is without having it explained to you by a professional. Today, we want to clear up any misconceptions or ideas you might have about penetration testing and how it relates to your business’ network security, compliance, and regulatory requirements.

Workforces have been increasingly distributed and many businesses aim to continue that strategy for the foreseeable future. There are a fair share of challenges that distributed employees have themselves, but for the business, it can be tough getting them to do the things that need to be done to secure the business. Here are a few actions that need to be taken if you want to make that happen. 

As statistics for cybercrime surge, it’s important to remember that your organization must do all that it can to protect itself. There is, however, a C-suite position that almost exclusively focuses on this task: the chief information security officer, or CISO. Many enterprises have individuals dedicated to the sole task of securing their organization, but smaller businesses might find themselves lagging behind in this regard due to no fault of their own.

The world is full of people who would try to take advantage of your organization and its employees—or, in less gratifying words, scammers. They will do everything they can to try to fool your company and make a quick buck doing so. How can you make sure that the countless messages and phone calls you receive on a daily basis aren’t crooks trying to scam you out of house and home? It all starts with a little awareness.