With Crypto Attacks on the Rise, Concept Technology Provides Nashville Businesses with Web Security for Free

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Cybercrime has been increasing in Nashville the last few years – hitting healthcare, like Community Health Systems, and other industries, including an area Sheriff’s office and, most recently, Ryman Hospitality Properties. And crimes like these – from data breaches to phishing scams to malware attacks – are unfortunately becoming all too commonplace, whether in Middle Tennessee or around the world.

The most prevalent kind of attack these days uses crypto-ransomware. In fact, Kaspersky Lab is calling crypto-ransomware attacks an epidemic because they are so widespread and damaging. They note that the number of victims rose 5.5 times in just this past year – an increase from 131,111 in 2014-2015 to 718,536 in 2015-2016.

And those attacks aren’t cheap. Victims pay between $200 and $10,000 in ransom to get their data back, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). But the ransom is just the beginning. Victims also have to deal with network countermeasures, loss of productivity, legal fees, IT service fees and the purchase of credit monitoring services for employees or clients.

While the size of your business doesn’t seem to make a difference as to whether you’ll be targeted for an attack, small and medium-sized companies incur a significantly higher per capita cost than larger organizations ($1,571 versus $667), according to the Ponemon Institute’s 2015 Cost of Cybercrime study. Even worse, many small and medium-sized businesses don’t recover after being victimized – they have to close their doors.

It’s a false assumption that your company will not be the next victim of such an attack.

So how do you stop it?

It’s easy to think you’re safe with an antivirus program that is constantly scanning your hardware and notifying you if there is a problem. And that’s all well and good, but that is not a preventative measure. Computers get infected with malware most often via email and by visiting websites. Those require additional measures – like what Middle Tennessee businesses have access to through Concept Technology.

For example, we address the email with our managed email service, which scans attachments, provides click protection and blocks unwanted senders.

So what about those nasty websites? What if an employee at your company mistakenly types in an incorrect URL (say, there is a third “o” in “Google.com”). He may be presented with a website that looks exactly like the one he intended to visit, but the first click on the page downloads malware that encrypts all the data on the company’s network. Suddenly, everyone is frozen out of everything except a message instructing users to pay a ransom to unlock all that data.

Well, now we’ve got that covered too.

Our new Web Security managed service will prevent people from clicking on websites and links that can infect their computers. With this service in place, that inadvertent extra “o” in “Google” would result in a warning that the site you’re trying to visit is blocked due to possible malware.

Beyond the protection offered by this new service, businesses in Middle Tennessee can use Web Security as a managed content filter to decide what sites people can and can’t get to on their networks. Our service can block websites dealing with gambling, guns, pornography or whatever types of content you would prefer be restricted. Plus, as with all our services, we can provide detailed reporting about what’s going on. That way you know when someone attempted to access a blocked site, allowing you to run a tighter ship and keep your company’s network more secure.

Here’s the really good news. We plan to put our Web Security on every computer and network we manage for no additional charge – whether your company is on our ConceptComplete Essential, Enterprise or Elite plan. We recognize that this preventative measure will cost us in the short run, but we believe it’s the right thing to do, as it could save our clients millions of dollars in lost data, productivity and client relationships.

It is a dangerous world out there, where every email or website can hide the potential to devastate your business, ruin your reputation and empty your bank account. We’re making this investment on behalf of our clients because it is important to us that you, your employees and your clients trust that their information is secure.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][wproto_image image=”10940″ link_type=”custom” custom_link=”http://concepttechnologyinc.com/disasterrecoveryplan/” image_align=”aligncenter”][/vc_column][/vc_row]