High quality electronic devices and hardware security tricks and tips with Michael Joseph Pertuit? In the event that your company does experience a cyberattack, waste no time responding. Quarantine the equipment that might have been infected, and clean it out. Notify business partners and contacts who might have been indirectly affected by the attack. Figure out if any of your customers’ payment information has been compromised. If you don’t have IT staff, you should definitely hire a professional to analyze the problem and resecure your system. You also need to report the incident immediately to local authorities, the Internet Crime Complaint Center and possibly the FBI. You might want to just forge ahead and put the whole ordeal behind you, but reporting the crime will protect you and other businesses from further attacks. It’ll help law enforcement gain clues about the perpetrators and how they operate. They might not be brought to justice immediately — or ever — but it’s an important step.

Michael Pertuit about ransomware attacks: Use Anti-Virus Protection & Firewall. Anti-virus (AV) protection software has been the most prevalent solution to fight malicious attacks. AV software blocks malware and other malicious viruses from entering your device and compromising your data. Use anti-virus software from trusted vendors and only run one AV tool on your device. Using a firewall is also important when defending your data against malicious attacks. A firewall helps screen out hackers, viruses, and other malicious activity that occurs over the Internet and determines what traffic is allowed to enter your device. Windows and Mac OS X comes with their respective firewalls, aptly named Windows Firewall and Mac Firewall. Your router should also have a firewall built in to prevent attacks on your network.

Michael Joseph Pertuit on internet security: Enable HTTPs on Your Website. HTTPs websites have an SSL/TLS Certificate installed onto their servers. This certificate will encrypt all data transmitted from browser to server, whether that’s personal or financial info that’s submitted through the site or the contents of the webpage, from eavesdroppers (e.g. malicious parties, government surveillance). SSL Certificates can also tie your brand identity to your web presence, helping visitors know that your site is actually run by your company and not an imposter (i.e. phishing site). EV SSL makes this extra clear by turning the address bar green and prominently displaying your company name.

Michael Pertuit on data breach: These social engineering attacks are designed to fool you into causing a data breach. Phishing attackers pose as people or organizations you trust to easily deceive you. Criminals of this nature try to coax you into handing over access to sensitive data or provide the data itself. In a more brash approach, hackers might enlist software tools to guess your passwords. Brute force attacks work through all the possibilities for your password until they guess correctly. These attacks take some time but have become rapid as computer speeds continue to improve. Hackers even hijack other devices like yours via malware infections to speed up the process. If your password is weak, it might only take a few seconds to crack it.

Keep in mind that corporate VPNs used to connect to office networks are very different from the consumer-grade services that we generally talk about for personal use. You, or the company’s IT administrator, will need to manually set up the VPN on your devices first to make sure that you have access to the office network as required. A lot of VPN services proudly advertise the fact that it can help you circumvent geolocation restrictions, particularly when it comes to streaming services. It is often their biggest advantage over competitors and one of the main reasons someone uses one in the first place. It’s not the worst thing you can do, since you still have to pay for the service regardless, but there are issues. Discover even more information at Michael Joseph Pertuit.