The November 30, 2022, attack affected the official Vatican.va website. Several other Vatican sites were also inaccessible for hours.

The suspected hack came a day after Pope Francis condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In an interview, he singled out particular troops for their “cruelty” during the war.

You may think your business is not doing anything to provoke a Russian cyber response, but that’s not the only way you become vulnerable to cyberattack.

Know your vulnerabilities online

A vulnerability is a point of weakness cyber bad guys exploit to access your systems. They can use these shortcomings to cause damage and undermine data privacy. Common vulnerabilities include:

• firewall weakness
• operating system flaws
• network misconfigurations
• unpatched software
• weak access credentials
• unencrypted information

Only some vulnerabilities are exploitable, as attackers may need more public information to leverage the weakness. Your existing security controls may protect the weakness, or the attacker may need authentication or local system access to target the vulnerability.

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Still, vulnerabilities of any kind can put your business technology at risk.

Causes of vulnerabilities

There are many reasons for IT vulnerabilities. That’s one of the significant challenges of cybersecurity. As your business enters 2023, take the time to look for symptoms such as:

• complex systems, which make misconfigurations and flaws more likely.
• unsecured operating systems, which risk viruses and malware.
• poor password management with employees using weak passwords or reusing access credentials.
• connectivity sprawl – each device and other connected endpoint expand your attack surface.
• assuming user input is safe, which can lead to unintended consequences –instead, set up your systems to verify before access.

Identify vulnerabilities with network scans and by reviewing firewall logs. You should also map out your technology and all endpoints. You can’t protect it if you don’t know it needs security.

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Also, update any software or hardware whenever possible. Plus, check the level of risk associated with any other vulnerabilities. Then, find countermeasures or patches to boost your security.

Protect against cyberattack

The Vatican had an $887 million budget in 2022, and you can expect they spent some of that on cybersecurity, but it proved insufficient. Still, the Holy See will rebound. The Catholic religion has endured many attacks over its nearly 2000 years. It also suffered a targeted attack by Chinese hackers in 2020.

READ MORE:  The Biggest Vulnerabilities that Hackers are Feasting on Right Now

Your business may not have the same resilience to cyberattacks and unplanned downtime. Hopedale Technologies can help you shore up your cybersecurity. Whatever your budget, there are steps we can take to ensure you’re ready to combat a cyberattack. Call us now at 508-478-6010.

Quickly spot the red flags and put phishing emails where they belong:

1. Poor spelling and grammar
While occasional typos happen to even the best of us, an email filled with errors is a clear warning sign. Most companies push their campaigns through multiple review stages where errors are blitzed, and language is refined. Unlikely errors throughout the entire message indicate that the same level of care was not taken, and therefore the message is likely fraudulent.

2. An offer too good to be true
Free items or a lottery win sure sound great, but when the offer comes out of nowhere and with no catch? There’s definitely cause for concern. Take care not to get carried away and click without investigating deeper.

3. Random sender who knows too much
Phishing has advanced in recent years to include ‘spear phishing,’ which is an email or offer specially designed for your business. Culprits take details from your public channels, such as a recent function or award, and then use it against you. The only clues? The sender is unknown – they weren’t at the event or involved in any way. Take a moment to see if their story checks out.

4. The URL or email address is not quite right
One of the most effective techniques used in phishing emails is to use domains that sound almost right. For example, [microsoft.info.com] or [pay-pal.com]

Hover over the link with your mouse and review where it will take you. If it doesn’t look right or is completely different from the link text, send that email to the bin.

5. It asks for personal, financial, or business details
Alarm bells should ring when a message contains a request for personal, business, or financial information.  If you believe there may be a genuine issue, you can initiate a check using established, trusted channels.

While education is the best way to ensure phishing emails are unsuccessful, a robust spam filter and solid anti-virus system provide peace of mind that your business has the best protection available.

Our email service offers sophisticated anti-phishing and targeted attack protection capabilities as well as point-of-click protection to help protect you from accidentally clicking on known malicious links.

The many reasons to establish data backups include:

• protecting against natural or man-made disasters (including hacker or insider attack);
• ensuring compliance with tax, financial, and other industry standards;
• preserving relationships with clients;
• reducing downtime;
• improving productivity;
• establishing credibility with customers, investors, and employees.

We recommend backing up in three places. You might have one on a local, on-site computer. You’d also have a backup on a remote device and another in the cloud. The cloud option gives you the most flexibility. It can be accessed from anywhere, regardless of conditions in your particular environment.

Yet while many people know they need backups, too few do recovery tests. The worst time to find out there’s a problem with your backup solution is when you need it the most.

Testing Data Backups

Regular data backups can offer peace of mind, but you’ll really know you are ready to go if you regularly test your ability to recover your system from a backup.

Testing your backup lets you verify the necessary data is available for recovery. Plus, testing helps you learn how to actually implement recovery following a data loss. If a backup test fails, you can take the steps needed to ensure you don’t actually lose valuable information. Otherwise, you’re throwing money at storage space and backup services that are no help, and you’ll find out too late.

Regular monitoring helps you keep track of any software or hardware changes that may have an impact on data backups. Via testing, you might also learn some staff members are storing data somewhere that isn’t being backed up, and you can now intervene with those employees or extend your backup protocols to prevent that data getting lost.

Scheduling data backup tests can also help you to identify a misconfiguration in the backup software or ways in which you’re not adequately addressing your backup needs.

For instance, you might not have set up a complete backup in the first place. This might mean you’re backing up the data but not the settings. Most backup software will send error messages if there was an issue backing up. Still, they’re easy to miss.

Actively testing backups allows the business to confirm fallback data accuracy and effectiveness. Additionally, you’ll be able to gauge:

• how long it takes to perform the backup;
• any issues that arise during recovery;
• what steps need to be taken to address those problems.

All of this is something you want to consider proactively. Some people say they work best under pressure, but most of us think more clearly and perform better if not in the midst of a data catastrophe.

A managed service provider like Hopedale Technologies can help your business with data backup and recovery testing. We can monitor for failures and make any changes needed to get the backup running properly again. You’ll be glad you did recovery testing in advance when things run smoother and quicker in the midst of your disaster recovery.