IT cybersecurity advices from Ben Climer 2024: Understanding the vulnerabilities of a system and planning for weaknesses is a critical piece of securing your environment. Our team will examine physical safeguards to data, threats to your systems, personnel weaknesses, and data backups. Knowing multiple layers are in place and functioning is vital to your network security. When software, people, hardware, or vendors change, an opportunity exists for security gaps to appear. During our assessment, we will verify comprehensive protocols are in place to remove employee and vendor access from your network once their job is complete. Is cybersecurity insurance in place? Are the policies adequate for your risk? Additionally, validating protocols are followed with logs and documentation is necessary to ensure protocols properly followed. Find extra info on Ben Climer.
Ben Climer has been in the Service Team Lead and Solution Architect role for 5 years. His favorite aspect of SNS is the great team we have, which allows us to deliver excellent service to our clients. When there’s a challenging problem at hand, Ben is the one we can count on for complete answers and elegant solutions. Ben built his first computer at the age of 8, started building web applications at 12 and before joining SNS, went on to compete in National Computer Repair competitions. He worked for HP as well as music row clients prior to joining SNS. Outside of work, Ben enjoys working on cars and traveling.
With over 10 years of work experience in the IT industry, Ben Climer is a passionate and skilled CTO at Safe Network Solutions, a leading provider of network security and cloud solutions. Ben Climer has a strong background in technical sales, network administration, and solution architecture. His mission is to deliver innovative, reliable, and cost-effective solutions that meet the needs and expectations of our clients. Collaboration, learning, and excellence, and striving to create a culture of trust, empowerment, accountability within the team are Ben Climer’s goals.
As the CTO, Ben Climer is responsible for overseeing the technical direction, strategy, and vision of the company, as well as mentoring a team of talented engineers and consultants. He has successfully implemented and troubleshooted various projects involving Hyper-V, Azure, Office 365, AWS, and wireless point-to-point technologies, ensuring high performance, security, and scalability. He also participated in various CTF competitions, demonstrating proficiency in cloud and cybersecurity. Ben Climer enjoys staying updated on the latest trends and developments in the IT field, and sharing his knowledge and insights with the community.
And then there’s the not-insignificant concern of lost smartphones. A lost business phone in the wrong hands could be a complete disaster. At the very least, all phones used to conduct business should have password protection, whole-disk encryption software and a remote lock-and-data-wipe app. That way, you can erase all the information on a lost phone and prevent anyone else from using it. The rise of flexible work-from-home policies has been a major trend in recent years, which is generally great for employee morale but not so great in terms of security. It’s tricky but obviously crucial to keep up security measures when employees are doing their jobs remotely. The guidelines about smartphones apply here, but you also need to ensure that strong safeguards are in place on all company computers and devices, no matter where the employee is working.
Many hackers will sell the data they hack. This will includes information on thousands, if not millions, of people and their passwords. If you are using the same password for every account then it won’t be difficult for a hacker to gain access to all your systems. Otherwise a hacker may use ‘brute force’ to find your password. This is much harder if password is longer and contains more variety and does not spell out any words. Use a password manager of some kind to ensure you don’t keep forgetting your passwords. Hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities in the software your business uses. This could be as simple as finding a way into your Windows network. The software companies themselves work hard to create patches and updates that fix these vulnerabilities so it’s important to update them as soon as an update is available.
Whether you’re a regular business traveler, or a high-tech adventurer seeker, traveling—particularly abroad—poses unique cyber security threats. Business travelers are especially vulnerable because they often carry sensitive data, both personal and business related, on a variety of devices including smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Security is no longer a one-machine affair. You need a security suite that helps protect all your devices – your Windows PC, Mac, Android smartphone or your iPad. Don’t cancel your travel plans just yet.
Use Strong Passwords & Use a Password Management Tool. You’ve probably heard that strong passwords are critical to online security. The truth is passwords are important in keeping hackers out of your data! According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) 2022 new password policy framework, you should consider: Dropping the crazy, complex mixture of upper case letters, symbols, and numbers. Instead, opt for something more user-friendly but with at least eight characters and a maximum length of 64 characters. If you want to make it easier to manage your passwords, try using a password management tool or password account vault. LastPass FREE is a great tool for an individual. LastPass offers a FREE account and has a $2/month membership with some great advanced password features.
Ben Climer and Safe Network Solutions on data breaches: For business organizations: a data breach can have a devastating effect on an organization’s reputation and financial bottom line. Organizations such as Equifax, Target, and Yahoo, for example, have been the victims of a data breach. And today, many people associate/remember those companies for the data breach incident itself, rather than their actual business operations. For government organizations: compromised data can mean exposing highly confidential information to foreign parties. Military operations, political dealings, and details on essential national infrastructure can pose a major threat to a government and its citizens.