Apr 3, 2014 // Andrew Stroup
IT security has its own confusing lingo that sometimes only the tech savvy can understand. And while most of us tend to leave the ‘tech talk’ to the professionals, business owners looking to choose the right platform to protect their data certainly need to know what some of that confusing lingo means! Recently our very own CEO and co-founder, Andrew Stroup, sat down with Software Advice’s IT security managing editor Daniel Humphries (along with other security experts) to help decipher a selection of security buzzwords. Here are some of Andrew’s contributions to the article.
Regarding Secure Email Gateways Andrew said: “This type of security scans all company emails and attachments, looking for anything that could lead to additional direct attacks to your company. This is helpful when you have employees who don’t practice good security behavior and may open spam emails and click on links.”
Andrew also pointed that web and email gateways and Data Loss Prevention help protect against what is perhaps the most easily exploited vulnerability in any business- human error:
”The bottom line is that the weakest link in your security is often your employees. As a business owner, you have to gauge how they use company computers and what they access while on the network, and sometimes even at home if you have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy.”
As an illustration, Andrew pointed to the recent incident when hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army hackers infiltrated the Forbes.com website, compromised user data and even posted a fictitious story:
“This was caused by an email attack on an employee with super administrative permissions,” he explains. “That’s all it took to let the Syrian Electronic Army gain access to the entire company’s assets, and the hackers could have deleted everything if they wanted to.”
Here is the full Software Advice article with more security buzzword definitions!
