-the-middle attacks, especially when using public wi-fi. This kind of attack can expose login credentials, financial information, and other personal data.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is one method of preventing data interception, even if the user falls for a man-in-the-middle attack. VPNs offer end-to-end encryption, so it encrypts data on the sender's side and decrypts it on the recipient's side. If anyone intercepts packets in transit, they won't be able to extract any meaningful data.
6) Find Vulnerabilities in Your Cybersecurity Network with Penetration Testing
Penetration testing, also called pen testing, helps you find any existing weaknesses in your system. Penetration testing tools will scan your system and list each vulnerability by category and severity.
You can perform a pen test at any time to probe your system for weaknesses. Some of the most important times for a pen test, however, include when you:
- Connect a new office to your network
- Upgrade or add applications to your system
- Add new infrastructure to your network
- Change your security policies
You can hire a security team to test your system, or if you don't have room in your budget to hire security contractors, you can use open-source tools like:
- Metasploit Project, a comprehensive penetration testing framework that looks for the oldest and newest vulnerabilities
- Wireshark, which analyzes your network protocols and gives you a security report
- John the Ripper, which will try to crack your (hopefully) strong passwords
For the best results, use a combination of pen testing tools to probe your system.
What Should You Do After a Data Breach?
If you follow the steps above and perform a thorough audit of your data security measures, you should now understand how to prevent data breaches.
Unfortunately, data breaches can happen to even the most prepared companies. In 2020 alone, we saw massive cyberattacks at Nintendo, Twitter, and Zoom. If you discover that hackers have compromised sensitive data, you need to have a response plan in place to protect your end-user information.
1) Let Clients Know That the Data Breach May Affect Them
Most states in the U.S. have laws requiring you to inform clients of data breaches that may affect them.
More importantly, clients deserve to know that a criminal may have their personal data. Clients may need to notify their banks, check their credit reports, order new credit cards, or take other actions.
Keeping people informed will also help limit the PR nightmare your company faces. A data breach is bad for your reputation. An attempted cover-up is worse. When you keep customers informed, you can let them know the extent of the breach. This helps them decide how they can protect themselves, and what steps you're taking to fix the problem.
2) Determine How the Data Breach Happened
You need to know how a data breach happened so you can prevent future attacks. Your penetration testing tools should show you how the cybercriminal infiltrated your network.
If pen testing doesn't reveal the exploit, you need to hire a forensic network security expert. The hacker may have used a new exploit that your tools can't identify. A security professional, however, should know how to track the hacker's steps to discover the entry point.
3) Take Action to Limit Further Data Loss
Once you know how someone stole data from your system, you must take action to limit further loss. If you don't plug the hole, then the criminal will keep stealing from you.
With some luck, your penetration testing or security expert can show you how to patch the weakness in your system. If that isn't possible, take your network offline until you can find and fix the vulnerability.
4) Implement New Data Security Standards to Prevent Future Security Breaches
Data breaches are an opportunity to re-evaluate your security standards. After reviewing the situation, you may decide that it's time to:
- Update your employee security training to include new trends
- Purchase new network hardware that meets the latest security standards
- Start encrypting more of you