5 Signs Your Business Network Has Been Hacked — and What to Do About It

There are many warning signs your business’s network has been hacked, and there are as many reasons you may assume your business will never be hacked. Unfortunately, by the time your network begins to behave erratically, it is usually too late for more than damage control. As global dependency on the Internet increases, cyber-hacking and other types of online espionage and theft are working hard to keep up. No business that has a website or uses email (which is all businesses today) is exempt from the threat of cybercrime. Learn how to detect warning signs and how to proactively protect against cybercrime.

Self-Installing Programs

One of the first signs your network has been hacked is the presence of new programs downloading, updating or installing themselves. Self-installing programs are red flags that your network is potentially vulnerable to cyber-hacking or may have already been breached.

Firewall Crashes

One way hackers access your network is to find weaknesses in your firewall system. When your firewall crashes repeatedly, it may indicate hackers are attempting to break in by finding and engaging vulnerabilities in your firewall setup.

Suspicious Event-Log Entries

When your daily firewall log entries include repeated notices about failed logins or unknown errors, these can indicate attempts by hackers to breach your network. While it is easy to assume these errors relate to simple employee error (for instance, remote employees who forget their login/password combination), still take an overly cautious approach and analyze each for threats.

Reduced Network Speed

Reduced network speed can indicate heavy network traffic brought on by the presence of hackers actively working to breach your network and steal data or disable your system. Note “typical” times of heavy network activity — perhaps mid-morning/afternoons and before each quarterly board meeting —and match those against the slow periods you notice to see if threats may be present.

Repeated System Crashes

A network system that crashes repeatedly may indicate vulnerabilities. One likely issue is that cyber-hackers are already working hard trying to compromise your network.

How to Respond to Threats

In the presence of one or more of these “red flags,” IT experts recommend taking the following precautions to follow up, analyze your network for vulnerabilities and identify potential threats or breaches.

• Notify the FBI. Following President Obama’s passage of the Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity executive order, the FBI and other agencies are working harder than ever to share information and partner with vulnerable businesses to eliminate cybercrime.
• Perform a thorough risk assessment. To neutralize threats, recognize your network’s weaknesses. Risk assessment should be an ongoing part of IT security measures at your company as well as a measure taken in the presence of red-flag threat indicators.
• Keep your anti-virus and other software is up to date. Running with outdated versions of software creates vulnerability to cybercrime. The newest updates often come with fixes for such vulnerabilities. Regularly update your software on the central network and for every satellite device and system.
• Encryption. Data should be encrypted at every phase: during creation, storage, retrieval and transmission.
• Monitor and protect hardware as well as software. While it may seem far-fetched to believe sophisticated cybercriminals may simply walk onto your premises and load your hardware into their trucks, this continues to happen.
• Hire IT security professionals. This can be a part of your risk-assessment protocols or —especially if your company handles sensitive data on a regular basis — part of your ongoing IT security plan.
• Lock down your system. Today’s Wi-Fi is so sophisticated seasoned cybercriminals can often “surf” their way into your network by simply driving around with a smart device to locate Wi-Fi networks lacking password protection.

Using this checklist of red flags and security fixes, you can feel more confident about your business’s network security.

If you’re interested in learning more about education in this field, such as earning a cyber forensics investigation and administration degree online, you can discover more here.

About the Author: Sharon Culligan is cyber-policy consultant for several federal agencies and a part-time IT professor. 

Tags: Computer security, Network security, Security

Category: Business, Identity Theft