Protecting Data: A Look At Information Technologies

When it comes to IT security, “you’re only as strong as your weakest link.” Whether that’s insecure passwords, phishing emails, or vulnerable hardware. Additionally, while we’d like to call Artificial Intelligence itself a hallucination, it’s slowly rising to the top as a security threat. All of these vulnerabilities present interesting challenges for the IT team at 4S Bay Partners. Not only challenging their technical knowledge but also their creativity on how to best address these methods of attack.

Passwords are one of the first things to be cracked by knowledgeable hackers. Especially if your information has been unfortunately leaked due to several data breaches from larger data aggregators. The time it takes to breach a password increases exponentially depending on the number of characters and symbols that comprise it. At 4S Bay Partners we ensure all employees employee strict password guidelines to ensure this common vulnerability is not exploited.

Phishing emails are another common, and surprisingly effective, tool in a hacker’s tool belt. With a little bit of social engineering and understanding of a company’s hierarchy, even the most educated employee can be victim to a malicious actor’s intent. Additionally, publicly available information on people’s specific writing style and tone via social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn provide the perfect data for AI to train from. The age of phishing emails riddled spelling mistakes and grammatical errors has ended. Now every phishing email can be a spear-phishing email with just a single search and a LinkedIn page. With this being such a looming threat the IT team at 4S Bay has implemented a range of different protections from these attacks. But not all software is perfect, and some emails still slip through the cracks. In response, the IT team has doubled-down and has required phishing email training across the entire company. Information is safer now than before.

Back in day the materials making up a piece of technology was the source of its value. But not anymore. Our hardware is vulnerable. Items like laptops, phones, and tablets are regular targets for the common thief. However, it is no longer just about the components. Now, more than ever, data is considered the new gold. To combat the vulnerable hardware problem, the IT team has an arsenal of different tools and computer policies ensuring that even if a piece of hardware is lost or stolen, the most thieves would walk away with is a very expensive paper weight.

Lastly, we address Artificial Intelligence. This new tool is changing the world as we know it, and it’s also quickly becoming the average person’s favorite place to dump proprietary information. There is no inherent protection or insight as to what these AI companies store and whether they sell your data. However, at 4S Bay Partners we’ve added security policies preventing the exfiltration of our proprietary information. Additionally, we’ve set contracts with our AI providers ensuring they won’t train their models off any data we submit to them.

You can be certain that the IT team at 4S Bay partners is staying up to date on the latest tech trends and addressing all points of attack within hackers’ toolbelts.