Steps to Increase Cybersecurity for EB-5 Regional Centers
In an age of ever-present cyberattacks and email phishing scams, business owners need to proactively take measures to protect both the company ' s and clients ' personal information.
By Richard Kristof
An EB-5 regional center is a financial institution, which must take precautions when it comes to the security of investors’ personal information and the finances of the projects the center supports. Security is achieved from a plan, not by accident, and that plan needs to acknowledge that any weak link provides a vulnerability that might allow cybercriminals access to information that could jeopardize the business.
Cybercrime is part of daily life. Protecting yourself, your investors and your projects requires taking the threats seriously and having all the proper protections. You can’ t wait until you get hacked or fall victim to a ransomware attack. If that happens, the damage is already done, and there is very little that others can do for you. Protection against cybercrime must be handled proactively, like those in the financial services sector have done for decades.
WHAT IS THE WEAKEST LINK IN THE SECURITY CHAIN?
Internal users are the biggest concern, starting with passwords. Passwords are easy for to remember and then use them for multiple systems. Even worse, most of us don’ t change them regularly, which can allow the breech of one system to provide access to other systems with only a little detail from your website or social media. Simply implementing a password policy for your business will go a long way toward adding a layer of security to protect against this common threat. Using a password vault like 1Password or LastPass is a huge time-saver and can greatly increase your password security.
THE PERCEPTION OF SECURITY WORKS BOTH WAYS
Secure socket layer( SSL) certificates have long been considered unnecessary for information-based websites until Google and others started to brand those sites unsafe. Furthermore, the new search engine optimization( SEO) algorithms lower the page ranks of sites not behind proper SSL certificates, giving more reason to add the relatively inexpensive coverage. In a random search of active regional centers, many can be found to not be using SSL certificates for their websites. Cybersecurity is such an important part of running a financial institution that someone in your organization, even if you run a three-person operation, needs to be designated as your security officer and have documented
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