Take this quick test and prior to the Security Summit 2015, the tenth annual essential information security update, which is being held in Johannesburg, and establish whether your business is at risk.
“SMMEs are often particularly vulnerable to attack, due to a range of factors – including not having enough technical resources to ensure the correct defensive measures are implemented, maintained and updated, and a low level of security awareness by users,” says Ranka Jovanovic, editorial director at ITWeb.
Among the most common risks are a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM), which occurs when communications between two parties are intercepted and tampered with, and spearphishing, typically achieved via e-mail spoofing or instant messaging, when users are tricked into responding to communications from attackers posing as trusted suppliers, e.g representatives from their banks, web sites they may have subscribed to, etc.
As many SMMEs run increasingly mobile workforces, theft of mobile devices such as laptops and cellphones also constitutes a major security risk, and does a lack of or inadequate endpoint encryption. Outages due to power failures or networks being compromised by other factors, e.g DDOS attacks, pose significant business continuity issues, while back doors - installed either as a tool by a systems administrator or as a means of attack by an aggressor – also leave SMMEs open to abuse.
“Our over-riding purpose when running the summit each year is to provide local infosec practitioners with the insights and practical advice they need to successful meet the challenges they face on a daily basis in a work environment characterised by an increasing number of security threats,” says Jovanovic.
SMMEs with 50 staff members or less, and non-profit organisations and NGOs get a 40% discount when attending
ITWeb events. Contact Lerato Mathize on +27 11 807-3294 between 07:00 and 16:00 to make a booking or email her on
[email protected]