Patch Your Software
Hackers are always on the lookout for easy ways to access systems that contain lucrative pay outs in the form of customer credit card information. One of the more popular ways that this is done is by targeting well respected and widely used third party systems that are used by a range of different people and businesses. Some of these programs include things like Flash, Java, and operating system programs. If they can find just one exploit in one of those programs, it’ll give them a way into countless different computers.
Flash and Java in particular can be very insecure, especially when it comes to large scale businesses that hold on to a ton of their customers’ financial data. These programs are well liked, well trusted, and for the most part, absolutely mandatory for common business practices. So how do you safeguard against the attacks?
Whenever Java or Flash detects an exploit in their system, they’ll patch it and release it for download. Unfortunately, not every user is as tech savvy as they could be, so a lot of them won’t go out and download the updates once they’ve been released, even though it’s very important they do so. It’s crucial that you educate your users on the dangers of not patching these types of programs or even putting an automatic downloader in place that get the updates by itself. Both methods are used depending on the type of business and its scale. The important part is simply making sure that every patch gets downloaded for everything.
Of course for any business or computer IT question, call Windward of San Diego for help!
