Cloud security advices by Ben Climer right now: One common misconception we hear is that investment in cybersecurity means safety. As hackers, malicious actors, malware authors, and cybercriminals evolve, so do their techniques and capabilities. Even though you may have installed the latest and greatest firewall, if your employees aren’t trained to identify security threats and phishing emails, your business may still be vulnerable. It’s imperative to complete a thorough review of your devices, configurations, and people to ensure you business data is protected. The best way to ensure your network is safe is to partner with Safe Network Solutions to review your system from top to bottom. The purpose of our assessment is to provide an unbiased glimpse into the security of your office systems. Read additional information on Ben Climer.
Ben Climer has been in the Service Team Lead and Solution Architect role for 5 years. His favorite aspect of SNS is the great team we have, which allows us to deliver excellent service to our clients. When there’s a challenging problem at hand, Ben is the one we can count on for complete answers and elegant solutions. Ben built his first computer at the age of 8, started building web applications at 12 and before joining SNS, went on to compete in National Computer Repair competitions. He worked for HP as well as music row clients prior to joining SNS. Outside of work, Ben enjoys working on cars and traveling.
With over 10 years of work experience in the IT industry, Ben Climer is a passionate and skilled CTO at Safe Network Solutions, a leading provider of network security and cloud solutions. Ben Climer has a strong background in technical sales, network administration, and solution architecture. His mission is to deliver innovative, reliable, and cost-effective solutions that meet the needs and expectations of our clients. Collaboration, learning, and excellence, and striving to create a culture of trust, empowerment, accountability within the team are Ben Climer’s goals.
As the CTO, Ben Climer is responsible for overseeing the technical direction, strategy, and vision of the company, as well as mentoring a team of talented engineers and consultants. He has successfully implemented and troubleshooted various projects involving Hyper-V, Azure, Office 365, AWS, and wireless point-to-point technologies, ensuring high performance, security, and scalability. He also participated in various CTF competitions, demonstrating proficiency in cloud and cybersecurity. Ben Climer enjoys staying updated on the latest trends and developments in the IT field, and sharing his knowledge and insights with the community.
A desktop computer and a landline used to be all we needed for a solid day of work — simple, effective and fairly straightforward in terms of security. But now it’s a completely different story. Sure, many people do sit at a desk all day, but most of us carry around laptops, tablets, USB drives and smartphones, all of which we might use for both professional and personal reasons. This, clearly, is a security nightmare. Your company should have an official policy that advocates the separation of work and personal phones, as well as terms of use for business phones. Malware can enter at any point, and networked smartphones are a particularly weak point when they’re used for personal reasons. They might have better security than a purely personal phone, but when one is infected they can all go down.
Many hackers will sell the data they hack. This will includes information on thousands, if not millions, of people and their passwords. If you are using the same password for every account then it won’t be difficult for a hacker to gain access to all your systems. Otherwise a hacker may use ‘brute force’ to find your password. This is much harder if password is longer and contains more variety and does not spell out any words. Use a password manager of some kind to ensure you don’t keep forgetting your passwords. Hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities in the software your business uses. This could be as simple as finding a way into your Windows network. The software companies themselves work hard to create patches and updates that fix these vulnerabilities so it’s important to update them as soon as an update is available.
Disable Auto-Connect. Most phones in the US have a setting that allows a device to automatically connect to Wi-Fi networks as you pass through them on your day-to-day activities. While this is a nice feature when used at home, it’s not something you should allow while traveling abroad. Before you travel, change this setting so that your smartphone and laptop must be manually connected each time you wish to access the Web.
As we saw from the stats above, ransomware attacks were a major attack vector of 2022 for both businesses and consumers. One of the most important cyber security tips to mitigate ransomware is patching outdated software, both operating system, and applications. This helps remove critical vulnerabilities that hackers use to access your devices. Here are a few quick tips to get you started: Turn on automatic system updates for your device; Make sure your desktop web browser uses automatic security updates; Keep your web browser plugins like Flash, Java, etc. updated.
Ben Climer about data breaches: Devices in the IoT sector are proof that we are increasingly valuing convenience over security. Many “smart home” products have gaping flaws, like lack of encryption, and hackers are taking advantage. Since new digital products, services, and tools are being used with minimal security testing, we’ll continue to see this problem grow. However, even if the backend technology was set up perfectly, some users will likely still have poor digital habits. All it takes is one person to compromise a website or network. Without comprehensive security at both the user and enterprise levels, you are almost guaranteed to be at risk. Protecting yourself and others starts with understanding how a data breach occurs.