Recently, at least 48 firms were successfully attacked when the “Poison Ivy” virus was planted on their Windows PCs. The attacks started probably in July and continued until mid-September of this year. The cause of the infection was by means of emails sent to different employees (Spam) that requested a meeting, updates to antivirus software or Adobe Flash Player (Phishing). Opening the message attachment, the employees unknowingly made their companies roll in Poison Ivy.
Poison Ivy is categorized as a RAT (remote-access Trojan) attack. Once infected, the virus issues commands to collect logon passwords to gain access to servers hosting confidential information, and eventually offload the stolen content to hacker-controlled systems. So what can a company do?
There are a number of tasks companies can do, but understand that nothing will give 100% protection. Moving to the cloud can cause even more problems so don’t look for that as a solution. The best advice for any size company are:
- Train employees on security and what to watch out for
- Deploy a multi-factor password manager to eliminate weak passwords and protect against keyloggers.
- Upgrade computers to Win7 and servers to Server 2010. Microsoft has been making big strides finally in security.
- Deploy Forefront and Identity Manager so access rights can be controlled
- Encrypt data
- Have a security expert on your team, even if it’s from an outside consulting firm.
Access Smart has been working with a number of companies that add different security aspects. Our new Additional Resources web page is designed to offer products/services that address a company’s vulnerabilities. We have broken down these companies into 6 categories:
- Building security
- Employee security
- Device security
- Network security
- Preparation/planning
- Recovery
It is with Access Smart’s products and those of our partners that will help to reduce the risk of a data breach and know what to do if one should happen.
Dovell Bonnett
Founder & CEO
Access Smart
27762 Antonio Pkwy, L1-461
Ladera Ranch, CA 92694
949-218-8754
