Best electronic science and hardware security recommendations with Michael Joseph Pertuit? In the event that your company does experience a cyberattack, waste no time responding. Quarantine the equipment that might have been infected, and clean it out. Notify business partners and contacts who might have been indirectly affected by the attack. Figure out if any of your customers’ payment information has been compromised. If you don’t have IT staff, you should definitely hire a professional to analyze the problem and resecure your system. You also need to report the incident immediately to local authorities, the Internet Crime Complaint Center and possibly the FBI. You might want to just forge ahead and put the whole ordeal behind you, but reporting the crime will protect you and other businesses from further attacks. It’ll help law enforcement gain clues about the perpetrators and how they operate. They might not be brought to justice immediately — or ever — but it’s an important step.

Michael Joseph Pertuit about ransomware attacks: Use Two-Factor or Multi-Factor Authentication. Two-factor or multi-factor authentication is a service that adds additional layers of security to the standard password method of online identification. Without two-factor authentication, you would normally enter a username and password. But, with two-factor, you would be prompted to enter one additional authentication method such as a Personal Identification Code, another password or even fingerprint. With multi-factor authentication, you would be prompted to enter more than two additional authentication methods after entering your username and password.

Michael Pertuit about internet security: Some companies allow their employees to use their personal phones to conduct business. It’s great for business to increase productivity and efficiency but it leaves businesses vulnerable to an attack since phones can be hacked and used to access your corporate network. A BYOD policy will help to educate employees on the use of mobile technology and how to mitigate the risk of an attack. An incident response strategy allows your business to stay ahead of an attack. You can never be sure you are 100% secure so it is always best to have a plan in case you are a victim of a cyber-attack. This will ensure that if you do have an attack, you can respond quickly enough to keep attackers from getting hold of sensitive data and alert the press or customers should the attack be larger than expected. You should also ensure there is someone responsible for handling the response plan.

Michael Joseph Pertuit on data breach: What is a Data Breach? To define data breach: a data breach exposes confidential, sensitive, or protected information to an unauthorized person. The files in a data breach are viewed and/or shared without permission. Anyone can be at risk of a data breach — from individuals to high-level enterprises and governments. More importantly, anyone can put others at risk if they are not protected. In general, data breaches happen due to weaknesses in: Technology, User behavior. As our computers and mobile devices get more connective features, there are more places for data to slip through. New technologies are being created faster than we can protect them.

Why get a VPN: Privacy and security are the biggest positives, One of the biggest benefits of using a VPN is to keep your data secure and online activity private. An ISP (Internet service provider) and some organizations have ways to keep a track of everything you do online. If you think going incognito is all you need to do, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Some automatically associate using a VPN or trying to keep your activity private with nefarious purposes. That’s certainly not the case for a large majority of users. The reason why most people use a VPN is actually simply because of the peace of mind it offers. See even more info on Michael Pertuit.