You thought you were familiar with the entire gamut of cyber crimes. Email phishing attempts, malicious malware attachments and then the outrageously frustrating ransomware gave you plenty to do. Unfortunately, your worries are far from over. There's a new threat in town.
The past ten years has seen the arrival of the APT or Advanced Persistent Threat. Most cyber-crimes are similar to a home or store robbery. Thieves break in quickly, make off with whatever of value is easy to grab, and then get out quickly before anyone can catch them. In the case of most cyber-crimes, hackers do the same thing. They steal anything that appears to be valuable, including account numbers, bank balances, social security numbers and passwords—and then disappear quickly without a trace.
The real difference in an APT attack is the word persistent. These hackers aren't afraid to hang around for a long time. In fact, they'll stay for years if the phishing is lucrative and productive. Most aren't located in the United States where penalties are tough on cyber criminals. Instead, they are wealthy and sophisticated enterprises based in countries like Russia and China, where they're unlikely to be prosecuted due to lax laws on intellectual property.
Your business may already be a victim of an APT attack; they're experts at hiding their presence in your networks. DLP or Data Leak Protection is one way to encrypt your sensitive data to keep hackers out.
Outsourcing your networks to Managed Services is another way to keep your St. Louis company's intellectual proprietary safe from APT attacks. Managed Services provides benefits like remote monitoring and network support to identify and address vulnerabilities and attacks before they have a chance to cause real problems.
Contact us at SumnerOne today for a security assessment and to learn more about how Managed Services can protect your company's data today! We are here to help.
Originally published December 8, 2016, updated November 15, 2018