Sales managers and business managers who do any type of business online need to make sure that they’re doing so safely and that they are taking the proper steps to make sure that any and all digital information they have is carefully secured. If you’re just starting to learn more about e-commerce and enterprise security data, you might be wondering to yourself, “what are the threats of my enterprise security data?”
What is Enterprise Data Security?
Right now there are three individuals who use a company’s information stores: sales managers, business managers and hackers. Sales managers use information stores to take advantage of opportunities to pair customers with certain products while business managers use information stores as a way to gather market intelligence that they can use against the competition, and hackers use the information for malicious deeds. What you’ll want to focus on as a business owner is delivering helpful information to business and sales managers while blocking hackers from accessing that same information.
As you’re focusing on digital security measures, you’ll want to think long term and concentrate on whatever weaknesses that you might currently have as well as any weaknesses that you might possibly develop in the future. It’s important that you act on threats rather than react to them. If you ever have to react, then you’re already behind. While a data security strategy won’t protect you against every threat there is out there, it will most certainly go a long way in preparing you for both internal and external threats.
A “No Wi-Fi” Policy Doesn’t Eliminate Threats
Many business owners believe that if they aren’t directly connected to the Internet that they don’t have as many security threats to worry about. The truth is that a Wi-Fi signal could still be finding its way into your enterprise by the embedded clients in laptops or through rouge access points. More than 55% of laptops that were shipped out in the year 2003 had embedded Wi-Fi, which means that it’s entirely possible that you could have a wireless signal in your enterprise that you aren’t aware of. A survey once showed that more than 20% of enterprise CIOs discovered unsecured access points on their network. You could potentially be inadvertently leaking confidential data about your business or your customers.
Categories of Wireless Threats
There are both malicious and common wireless threats. Rogue access points are some of the most common as well as some of the most dangerous. They are usually a low cost, SOHO-class access point that you or an employee might accidentally bring in whenever you’re looking for wireless access. Rogue access points don’t usually have security, which makes it possible for anyone with a Wi-Fi client to have an entryway into your data.
Poorly or misconfigured access points are something else to be cautious of. If you have a wireless LAN infrastructure, the threat you should be worry about could be the one from your own equipment. Misconfigured access points can become a welcome mat for hackers, especially if the access point is reset to the defaults for the network or if you don’t have any active security features.
There are several threats to your enterprise security data and seemingly more cropping up every day. Remain vigilant and up-to-date on the latest threats to avoid being caught unaware or two steps behind potential threats.
