The Low Hanging Fruit of Cyber Security Part 1 of 3: Patch, Patch, Patch

This three-part series will highlight areas that are easy for Thrive to implement in your organization to help keep your business protected.  Part one will cover patching, part two advanced email security, and part three security awareness training.

Just as you could have a hole in a window in your house, you may have one on your servers and computers as well!

If you have ever noticed a hole in a window of your house where critters may be able to enter, did you walk away and hope that they never found it?  If you took this approach, how long did it last?  Perhaps, you got lucky and they never did find the hole.  Or, did you end up having to call an exterminator and fix the hole after all?

This example was used on purpose as it highlights the fact that we all make choices at home and at work concerning the upkeep of our personal and professional environments.  If you choose not to maintain your computers by instituting regular patching, then you are leaving the window open for a potential event which could result in a disruption to your business, personal data being breached, or even data loss.

Given the number of computers that exist today it is hard to give an exact estimate, but according to a survey conducted by darkreading.com it has been revealed that 9.8% of all computers in the US are unpatched.

Regular patching of servers, laptops, and desktops operating systems is vitally important to ensure that electronic critters (ie. Spyware, virus, crypto locker) do not make it onto your computing devices.  In addition to patching the operating systems you also need to patch your applications (ie. Office, Acrobat, iTunes, etc.).  Working with Thrive, we can ensure that your servers, laptops, and desktops are patched on a regular cadence and provide you with proof to provide your auditors as needed.

Please contact Thrive or call us at 866-205-2810 for more information on proactively patching your systems.  Be sure to check back for part 2 of this series where we will dig into how to best protect your users from the terrible things that are still coming in via email.