How to Protect Your Accounts from Getting Hacked

How to Protect Your Accounts From Being Hacked Let Us show how:

A few disturbing statistics came out of the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) recently. It showed that credential theft is becoming a major problem and one that companies need to be aware of.

For example, password dumpers have become the #1 malware used in data breaches. This is a type of malware that seeks out login credentials to send back to the hacker.

Another finding showed that login credentials are the main data that phishing emails are targeting. About 60% of phishing emails are designed to steal usernames/passwords.

Business email continues to be the main port of entry for these attacks, with phishing remaining a big threat. But, now instead of simply trying to inject a virus or spyware, hackers want to steal company logins.

Why has credential theft become so prevalent?

There are a couple of reasons:

One is because of the improvement of antivirus and anti-malware solutions. It’s harder for hackers to force their way into a system, so instead they try to get a “golden ticket” inside in the form of legitimate user login credentials.

Another reason is that most companies have now moved their data to cloud services. Cloud service providers, like Microsoft and Google, have stringent IT security. In fact, the DBIR report also showed that about 70% of data breaches in 2019 involved on-premises assets and only 24% involved cloud assets.

So, to get to the data in cloud services, hackers generally need to have user login credentials.

Tips to Protect Your Business from Credential Theft

Unfortunately, there are many things that make it easy for hackers to get those valuable login credentials. Employees often have bad password habits, and cloud account administrators can misconfigure security settings or leave them at too low a level.

Here are several tips for protecting yourself against credential theft and securing your cloud account data.

Train Employees on Good Cybersecurity Practices

Employees need to be reminded regularly about cybersecurity best practices, which includes understanding how credentials are breached.

Ensure they understand how to spot phishing emails, which are the main method used to trick them into giving up login credentials.

Warn employees about going to login forms through links in an email. They should only login to a cloud application by going directly to the app in a browser or computer application.

Use Multi-factor Authentication.

The simple step of enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all your business logins can stop a majority of stolen credential attacks.

According to Microsoft, which sees about 300 million attempted account hacks a day, if you enable MFA, you can block 99.9% of fraudulent sign-in attempts.

If you’re worried that using MFA on all your logins will hurt productivity by adding an extra step several times a day, you can put a SSO (Single Sign-On) solution in place that will only require them to login and use MFA once to have access to all their apps.

Put Web Protection & Anti-Malware in Place

There are two important protections that you’ll find in Unbound Digital’s managed IT services plans that can help you protect your business accounts against credential theft.

• WEB PROTECTION: PHISHING EMAILS OFTEN CONTAIN A LINK TO A BOGUS SIGN-IN FORM, AND THIS IS HOW HACKERS STEAL LOGIN CREDENTIALS. WEB PROTECTION BLOCKS MALICIOUS WEBSITES EVEN AFTER A USER ACCIDENTALLY CLICKS AN EMAIL LINK.
• MANAGED ANTIVIRUS/ANTI-MALWARE: WITH MANAGED ANTIVIRUS/ANTI-MALWARE, YOU CAN ENSURE USER DEVICES CAN CATCH ANY MALWARE LIKE PASSWORD DUMPERS THAT MAY HAVE BEEN RELEASED INTO YOUR SYSTEM.

Force Strong Passwords in Cloud Apps

Users often use weak passwords so they can remember them, they’ll also often reuse passwords across several accounts (work and personal). While you can tell employees to use strong passwords, they often won’t.

You can mitigate the risk by editing your cloud app user security settings to require strong passwords, such as requiring they have at least 10 characters and at least one symbol and number.

Use Microsoft Cloud App Security

Microsoft Cloud App Security is what’s known as a cloud application security broker (CASB). It puts a layer of security in between your users and your cloud applications.

It allows you to see who is logging into your cloud applications and can detect any strange user behavior. A CASB allows you to block logins outside a particular geographical area or put in additional login challenge questions based upon different user events.

You gain visibility into your entire cloud ecosystem and can more easily detect any potential breaches of user credentials and can block unauthorized logins.

How Prepared Is Your Business for Credential Theft?

With the rise in credential theft, businesses need to revisit their login policies to ensure hackers can’t abuse them. Unbound Digital’s security experts can help you put the right systems in place to do that.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Call 423-335-2461 or reach us online.