Quick Intelligence Blog

Anyone who has ever taken a goal setting workshop is familiar with the phrase “not having a plan is planning to fail.” When it comes to cyber security, if you don’t have a cyber security protection and response plan, you are certain to face a cyber security failure of some sort.

Malware is loosely defined as software that, when installed on your pc, laptop, mobile device or server, does things that you really don’t want it to do. It could delete files, change your browser path, or create what’s known as a C&C (Command & Control) connection to an external server, allowing a hacker to connect directly into your PC without you knowing. It can run silently and hidden in the background, stealing your banking credentials when you log into the bank.

Computer viruses are bits of computer code that are designed to perform a specific purpose and are usually designed to propagate from one computer to another on a network. Just like viruses in the human body, a virus on a computer or network can make that computer “sick” meaning it doesn’t function the way it’s supposed to.

Nowadays, the digital equivalent of the wild west is called the Dark Web. The dark web is a subset of the internet that is intentionally hidden and not indexed. To access the Dark Web, a specific browser, like Tor, is required. Unavailable to the casual internet user, the Dark Web houses a treasure trove of stolen information, offering it for sale and trade on chat groups and online forums.

A firewall is software or hardware that sits at the edge of your network, between your company and the Internet. It’s designed to keep hackers out and to allow legitimate connections into your network if needed. Legitimate connections may include access to email, access to a company website or corporate cloud apps.

They say a fence is only as strong as its weakest link, that holds true with cyber security as well. With most companies outsourcing services to companies like yours (and ours!), what we do to protect ourselves directly impacts the overall cyber security postures of our customers.

Privacy and security go hand in hand. Cyber security focuses on protecting the information from unauthorized access, while privacy focuses more on protecting the contents of the information and ensuring it isn’t accessed or shared inappropriately. Both businesses and individuals have an expectation of privacy when they trust another business with their data.

A new survey by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) says that nearly 70 per cent of Canadian organizations facing a ransomware attack last year paid the demands to avoid downtime, reputational damage and other costs. The interesting thing is that when they asked cyber security professionals if they supported legislation to make ransomware payments illegal, 64% said yes.

So, you are a small business owner, and are about to land your first big client. Everything is going well, but before they sign the contract, they hand you a cyber security questionnaire. Now the panic sets in. Does this sound familiar?

PCI compliance, or Payment Card Industry compliance, is a set of standards created to ensure that when business take credit card payments online, they do it in a secure manner, minimizing the risk of credit card theft. The PCI Council creates the rules (there are ~150 of them) which dictate everything from firewall configuration to security protection on devices used to store, process, or transmit credit card data.