Cautionary Tales: Security Breaches of 2020 and How OTELCO Can Help Avoid Them

This year, businesses saw a whole new host of security threats as more companies than ever before made the transition to operating virtually. Remote workers, varying levels of home security, and hackers ready to capitalize on these new vulnerabilities made it a challenging year for many big names.

The good news - we can put these cautionary tales to use as we plan for the safest way to transition into 2021. Here are some of the notable breaches we saw this year, and how you can help avoid similar situations by updating your own security.

T-Mobile email security breach

In March, T-Mobile shut down a security breach targeting its email vendor that resulted in hackers gaining access to employee email accounts that contained sensitive employee and customer information.

The incident serves as a reminder that emails aren't always secure, and in fact employees can place their companies at risk if they're not well informed about best practices for staying safe online. To keep your company - and all of your data - safe, ensure your employees are educated about potential threats they may encounter in their day-to-day work.

Learn More About Defendify's Employee Awareness Package Canon suffers an attack that results in days-long outage

In August, an apparent ransomware attack caused the photo giant's image.canon website to be offline for 6 days. Once it was back up and running, certain 'lost' data called the company's security into question.

Breaches of this nature are why we recommend Backup as a Service for protection of any physical, virtual, and/or cloud infrastructure running on Windows, Mac or Linux. It's just one item in our Managed Services arsenal to keep customers operating as securely and efficiently as possible.

Learn More About how Security as a Service Can Keep your Business Safe 11 data breaches cause justified concerns over security

HM Revenue & Customs, the UK's tax, payments and customs authority, reported a whopping 11 personal data breaches in the last year, causing justified concerns over security for an organization that's responsible for the personal information of so many.

With cyber-crime growing ever more sophisticated, Security as a Service can help protect your business with dedicated security expertise that takes responsibility off your IT team, regular vulnerability assessments to identify threats early on, and incident response and crisis response support in the event of a breach. In addition to being a vital step toward taking appropriate security measures to protect the sensitive information saved in your systems, proper safety precautions can help uphold your reputation with your clients and community.

Cloud and Managed Services Consultations

Don't let these cautionary tales overwhelm you when it comes to fighting cybersecurity risks. The good news is, there are a host of managed services that can help your business stay on top of threats before they become a problem.