In the war between business tech and hacker invasions, we often imagine hackers with a criminal sneer. They use technical ability and corrupted software to take advantage of the digitally vulnerable. The lonely elderly, small businesses, families in crisis, and hospitals are favorite targets in the hacker community. It’s a matter of personal and professional satisfaction to close any door such that hackers simply cannot get through – or prevent hackers from gaining benefit even from successful invasions. As cybersecurity technology gets more advanced, we are now specializing not only in making our walls too thick to crack but also thwarting hackers who try bottom-feeding and loophole-exploiting methods.

Today, the cybersecurity industry has perfected several tools that not only stop hacking attempts, but actively thwart and frustrate the hackers who attempt to steal your data. We’re here to share five easy methods that any small to enterprise business could implement that will neutralize the attempts of most common hacker attacks.

1) Unreadable Data Loot: End-to-End Encryption

Getting hacked eventually has come to be a business fact of life. Between an army of copy-pasted malware spammers and the few actual hacker-brains in the horde, eventually, something will skim your database or compromise one of your many cloud services. The only question is what your hackers find when they open the loot-bag after raiding your data.

Encryption is our best defense against the inevitable database swipe or website skim. Encryption ensures that hackers might have your data – but they have it so deeply encoded that your data is useless. Not a single username or business plan is stolen if your data is properly encrypted at every step in the creation, transit, and secure storage process.

2) Un-Phishable Email: Advanced Email Spam Filters

Email and social media phishing have become the leading method for hackers to slip their malware or scams into company systems. Phishing has become the top type of “hacking”, now called “social hacking” because it’s a scam with a dash of malware or espionage on the side.

Well, just like the spam-mail of old, phishing emails have become so common that we have learned how to recognize them. More importantly, our AIs can recognize them. Modern email filtering features include ways to detect then flag or filter any email that follows a known phishing message pattern. This keeps your entire workforce safe when installed into the company email server.

3) The Fool-Me-Twice: Blacklist and Report Every Attack

Let’s say you do get hacked – make sure your monitoring software is in place. The fool-me-twice maneuver ensures that you are never successfully targeted by the same methods or hacker domain twice.

Network monitoring services and malware tracking can reveal a lot of useful data that can protect you (and the whole community) in the future. If you get a source domain name, catch a malware ReadMe file, or track suspicious IP addresses – blacklist whatever you find. Then submit your collected evidence of the hack to your security regulatory board and federal authorities. The more known bad-actors are blacklisted, the fewer large-server hacks can be conducted against businesses and individuals.

4) UnRansomable: Backup and Disaster Recovery Plans

The threat of ransomware that cripples hospitals and businesses is the file encryption. Encryption used as a weapon can suddenly make your entire system’s data unavailable. But what if you have a complete and recent backup of the system? Would you really need to preserve the current malware-infected files? The answer we smugly give is “no”. A great backup and recovery system – with a smooth re-installation of everything you backed up – can ensure that even the worst system-wide ransomware can’t take your company down for more than a few hours.

If your system and all vital data is already backed up, you simply cannot be held for ransom. You can factory-reset on that malware and have your system running again without paying a single bit-coin or decrypting your files.

5) Un-Hackable Team: Cybersecurity Drills

Last but certainly not least, you can also empower your entire team with a fun security-building exercise. Cybersecurity drills are conducted by your IT team to help employees (and execs) across all departments learn how to protect themselves from phishing and common malware attacks. Start with training, teaching everyone how to spot, stop, and report any suspected hacking attempt. Then release occasional faux-phishing emails and other suspicious tactics to keep everyone on their toes.

Congratulate employees with sharp eyes and uplift the team when a drill is detected and reported correctly. Once your team associates reporting a phishing email with Friday cupcakes, hackers won’t stand a chance.

Looking to optimize your company tech solutions and cybersecurity? Contact us for more great insights and to consult on your business security needs.