The minute you connect any portion of your IT environment to the web, your entire network will become vulnerable to multiple threats on multiple fronts—it doesn’t matter if it’s your iPhone or your email server—any device, regardless of size, can create the weak spot that provides an open door to your IT infrastructure.  To protect your system from risks, you need to know where your network is vulnerable.  Typical weak points are as follows:

• VPN- virtual connections between your home and corporate network can easily spread viruses and malware from one location to the other.
• Firewall- a misconfigured firewall gives access to local resources through the internet.
• Wireless- unsecured wireless networks broadcast signals that unauthorized users can hijack inside or outside your building.
• Mail server- improperly configured servers can be forced into relaying spam.
• Email- in addition to sending infected attachments, hackers now use “phishing” and “redirects.”  Phishing schemes attempt to lure an email recipient into entering personal, financial, or proprietary business information into websites that appear legitimate.  Re-directs will reroute a seemingly respectable hyperlink to a malicious or infected site.
• Web-email- an infected email from a web based service such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail can easily infect your workstation and then your entire corporate IT environment because web email will bypass most of your network’s security.
• Web browser- Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all have various vulnerabilities that can expose your workstation to malicious applications if you browse to an infected or compromised web site.
• Laptops- because most laptops are set to detect unsecured Wi-Fi points (Barnes & Noble, Borders, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc.), and because many users automatically allow the connection, it is easy to pick up viruses and malware and bring them back to office if you connect to those points.
• USB drives- portable storage devices, mobile phones and mp3 players can transport viruses from an unprotected home computer and infect your entire corporate IT network.

While there are multiple security vulnerabilities on a typical IT environment, a good security plan can address these weaknesses.  To learn more about securing your IT network, please call the security experts at All Covered at 866-446-1133.