Christmas is a great time to have fun and get your business hacked

Lets face it – as a business owner its hard to get your staff to be 100% on the job right now. The last week before Christmas is a time to relax and look forward to the long break.

One thing I have noticed when talking to businesses about IT security around this time is the mention of staff having to baby sit their children at work.

This can be due to the other parent already travelling to the Christmas destination or as a special treat for the child hang out with the mother/father at work for a few hours.

In order to entertain the child for those few hours we often see the use of iPads. mobile phones and other personal devices used – often plugged into the business network for Internet access or if no personal device is handy a spare office computer is located.

This is a very bad idea!

Its not hard to guess what the child will be doing on the device – an almost 100% guarantee that they will be on the Internet checking out their social media profiles, watching videos and playing games.

This is ideal for hackers because there is a good chance that ultimately the child will end up clicking on something that will cause a virus or malware to be installed on the device. Now as a hacker this is great because all the network perimeter protection such as firewalls and intrusion section systems are bypassed making it that more easier to get into the network.

The child becomes the unwitting helper not knowing about the businesses IT security policies nor caring.

Because there are thousands of malware and virus variations created every day anti-virus software vendors cannot keep up with creating the signatures needed to detect the new threats that is why IT security policies need to cover not only network and software protection mechanisms but educating staff so they are part of the protection realm.

So lets play it safe and if children are in the office do not give them access to the Internet using your businesses devices and network.