How to Prevent 99.9% of All Identity Hacks

99.9% More Secure

It’s getting a little bit crazy out there! This past week was spent reeling from the Kaseya hack and left our team having deep conversations about crazy what-if scenarios. Our systems weren’t affected from the breach, but it’s easy math to see how we could have been affected. At the end of the week, we took what we could learn from the Kaseya hack and got a little bit stronger. I’d like to talk about how you can do the same thing: learning from other’s painful experiences to get stronger.  

I attended a Microsoft security webinar this past week and a crazy statistic was thrown out. The security professional said that 99.9% of all identity hacks could be prevented by doing just one thing. By implementing Multi-factor authentication on all of your important accounts, your online identity would be virtually impenetrable. That’s mind blowing! 

So What Is MFA?

Multi-factor authentication is a security feature offered by most applications/website/devices that force two forms of authentication. It’s something that you know (password) and something that you have (an app on your phone). When you login to your critical application, you get prompted to also enter the code from an authenticator app on your phone. It takes a few seconds longer but makes it very, very difficult for a hacker to hurt you.  

The question now is, why don’t we all have MFA enabled on all important accounts? I’ll take a broad generalizing stroke here and say that we are all busy, and that security becomes a task that you know you need to do, but will put it off until you have nothing better to do. For anyone that has run a business knows, that euphoric moment of bliss never comes.  

Sadly, as a cyber security firm, we are often called to clean up the aftermath of a network intrusion and start with getting MFA setup. Once that is in place, we can start with the clean up process that is causing costly business disruption.  

How to Stop Costly Disruptions Before They Start

First, sit down with your team to identify the critical parts of your business in rank order. With that list in hand, start with the most critical application and setup MFA. Work your way to the bottom of that list. 

If we can help with this process or if you have questions about how to get started, reach out, we are always happy to help.  

Get In Touch to Keep Your Business Safe

If you’d like to know the status of your security and where improvements can be made, give us a call and we’ll be glad to assist. Learn about how Philantech3 is keeping your business safe in a continually shifting environment.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Wil Buchanan

Dr. Buchanan is passionate about helping organizations achieve their full potential and has over 25 years of working experience in the business world.