Author: Terry Barton | Date published: 22 June 2021
According to the latest data from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Australians lost a record-breaking $851 million to scams in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in cybercriminals increasing their activity targeting vulnerable users and this has not slowed down in 2021.
At BrokerReady we want to help prevent Cyber threats from harming you or your business so we have put together our recommendations on how to best prepare yourself.
- Keep your devices patched
The updating and patching of your servers and workstations is absolutely critical to helping prevent cyber threats. In fact, this should be a daily task.
For example, if you use an Operating system like MS Windows, you would be aware that Microsoft is constantly reviewing and testing its systems for vulnerabilities. When vulnerabilities are found, the issues are fixed and updates and patches are published. Microsoft ensures that these updates and patches are categorised by the urgency that they should be applied in.
Microsoft puts the work in to help protect you, and although keeping up with updates and patches can very time-consuming, it is crucially important that you follow through with the updates.
If you work for a company, their support will often use specialised software applications to automatically download, apply and reboot devices if required.
If your company does not auto-apply patches and updates, then there are utility applications that can assist you with this.
Remember, this activity is not a “set and forget” process, but requires constant monitoring.
If you would like more information to protect yourself and your business from cyber threats, get in touch with our team today.
For more tip tips on staying safe online, read our article: Stay safe online with these top 5 tips to help prevent a cyber-attack