As threats to technology and private information become more prevalent, the President of the United States and Congress have declared October Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an initiative aimed at helping people understand the ways in which they can protect themselves online.
This year's campaign theme, "See Yourself in Cyber," emphasizes the fact that, while cybersecurity may appear to be a complex subject, it ultimately comes down to people—meaning, see yourself in cyberspace, regardless of your role, and take the steps necessary to safeguard yourself and your systems.
To do so, Individuals, businesses, and consumers can implement strong cybersecurity measures to protect their digital privacy and prevent unwanted attacks.
In a recent episode of The Inspectations Podcast powered by The Aebli Group, host Justin Starbird sat down with Greg Edwards, CEO of Canauri™, formerly CryptoStopper, to discuss cybersecurity, its importance in today's business climate, and ways in which you can implement the best strategy possible.
Cybersecurity can be defined as the collective methods, technologies, and processes that help protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computer systems, networks, and data, against cyberattacks, including one of the most common today-malware.
Malware, or "malicious software," is an umbrella term that describes any malicious program or code that is harmful to systems.
Ransomware is an ever-evolving form of malware that prevents users from accessing their computer files, systems, or networks that comes with demands of ransom for their return.
In recent years, small and medium-sized businesses have become the primary targets of ransomware attacks. And unfortunately, being a newer form of attack on small businesses, many of these companies still have yet to adopt any form of ransomware protection.
"The biggest thing," Greg explains, "has been that they think they're not a target with the mindset of 'We're small companies. Why would they attack us?' If you have a bank account and an internet connection, they know you have money, and they will try to extract that money."
Canauri™ ransomware protection was explicitly designed for these small to mid-sized companies to get the same level of protection previously only available to enterprise customers.
It works great in a layered security approach—the practice of using multiple defense layers to slow down and prevent potential security breaches—and can be included in any offering as a stack-agnostic feature to round out a fully-layered solution.
"What Canauri™ does," Greg explains, "is deploy bait files and then, like a canary in a coal mine, it detects and alerts you to attacks and stops actively running ransomware that's gotten past all of the other defenses actively running on a network.
"Other existing cybersecurity tools out there are designed to prevent an attack. If those fail, if that prevention fails, which happens all the time, then there's nothing else left other than going to disaster recovery.
"What makes Canauri™ different is that we sit in that damage control place between protection tools and disaster recovery. Our mission is for you to be able to control the damage so that you don't have to go to the backup. That is exactly why I started Canauri™."
Besides the ransomware protection that Canauri™ offers, there are additional measures companies and individuals can take to protect themselves against cyberattacks.
"The number one thing," Greg shares, "is what I call good hygiene. It ensures that you understand your technology assets and that those assets are all current and up to date with security patching. That's, in my opinion, one of the easiest and most important things companies can do."
"Also, train your employees so they are not susceptible to fishing attacks and social engineering, which is the use of deception to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential or personal information that may be used for fraudulent purposes.
"Then, have a good disaster recovery. If all else fails, you want to make sure you can absolutely recover. Whether a hurricane hits, a fire, or a cyberattack, you need to be able to recover."
"Ultimately, you need to examine your approach to cybersecurity—look at the company, either the IT department that you're utilizing or the company that's managing it, and make sure that you can hold them accountable to make sure that they are doing what they say they're doing and that your systems are as protected as they possibly can be."
"Inspecting what you're expecting," Justin quips.
"Absolutely," agrees Greg.
Today, Canauri™ is working hard to spread their message about the importance of cybersecurity and is striving to become a thought leader within the industry.
"We are approaching our marketing from an educational standpoint," Greg explains, "and that's really for us out of necessity, but I think it's something that every company should look to do, figure out where they can educate the market and teach people."
To learn more about cybersecurity and the protection Canauri™ offers, visit canauri.com. Also, to hear more from Greg, listen to "Cybersecurity Awareness-See Yourself In Cyber" live on The Inspectations podcast powered by The Aebli Group today.
