The rapid rate of change within the digital landscape in recent years has led to a significant shift towards a digitally driven society. It is now considered the exception, rather than the norm, for companies to not have an online presence and although this may mean shiny new websites, increased visibility and a new ease of doing business, it can also pose a potential threat to the safety of your business data.
In line with this growing digitization and therefore the value of digital data, there has been a substantial increase in the incidence of cybercrime across the globe throughout almost all business sectors and industries. Modern day cybercrime is sophisticated and uses various methods to attack stored data and take control of it. Two key areas of cyber-crime include (but are certainly not limited to) both the stealing of information, otherwise known as a data theft, and the encryption of a company’s existing data which is then ransomed back to the business for exuberant sums of money. This is known as ransomware and this exact type of cyberattack on Garmin earlier this year is a prime example of this type of situation; hackers identified a vital aspect of a company’s digital infrastructure and their business operations, hacked into their system, encrypted their information and then offered to decrypt the information but only in return for ten million dollars. Garmin eventually paid the money and regained access to its data, but how do you learn from them and ensure that your website is both successful and safe?
To ensure that your company website is successful and reaches the largest number of people possible, your company will need to deploy a set of effective digital marketing research tools such as backlink checkers to maximise your online footprint. Backlink checkers are able to determine how high up your site will rank within online search engines by assessing the number of external links your content includes and they will be able to assist your business in managing your Search Engine Optimization. This will be able to both optimize your business and the resulting data.
A website is the most public facing element of your business operations and can be the starting point from which you are able to establish and maintain a successful digital infrastructure for your company. Today, it is largely considered to be the bare minimum of what companies should have by way of an online presence but they require a third party web hosting service to supply a space to “rent” in order to store all of your site information. You are able to rent either on a cloud based or a physical server and depending on your service provider and there are also a variety of additional factors that will affect the security of your data, including the type of firewalls, implemented security measures and what kind of backup options your web hosting provider offers.
As counterintuitive as this may seem, having a cloud based server actually decreases your risk factors as you are able to “split up” your data across multiple cloud based servers and you are not putting your proverbial eggs in one basket but either way, there will always be a chance that you are vulnerable to cyber-attacks when utilizing both of these server hosting methods and it will ultimately be the kind of web hosting service you choose that will largely determine the kind of security your servers will enjoy.
Along with all of these factors, the forthcoming introduction of 5G into the mainstream will undoubtedly affect the rate of both technological development and the resulting extent of cybercrime attacks. Having substantially faster internet – 600% faster than normal 4G internet to be specific – provides the infrastructure to support new types of cybercrime.
Because data is now considered to be the most valuable commodity in the world and with the rise of 5G, it will be take so much less time than ever before to access, it is imperative that companies protect their data and utilize the safest possible web hosting providers to maintain both customer trust as well as ensure the operational effectiveness of their organization.
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