Are You Vulnerable To A Hack?
Are you confident that the valuable personal or company data that you are storing on the cloud is safe? Are you aware that the above mentioned data can be compromised if your computer suffers from a virus or malware attack? This attack also has the potentiality to attack other computers that are sharing the same cloud storage with you. Let us understand how this happens. Most individuals synchronise one folder on their hard disk drive of their computer with the cloud storage. Whenever the data on the computer is changed, the changed data is automatically updated on the cloud too. It can then pass on to other computers linked to the same storage. Hackers use penetration testing software to find out weaknesses in computers or on cloud storage servers to gain access to the data stored therein. Fortunately, you can use the same set of programs to test the vulnerability of your online storage server and find out methods to protect the same against future attacks. Hackers typically try to crack wireless network keys and crack the passwords of the same using wordlists and brute force.
More information on penetration testing
The harsh truth
This method uses a dictionary of typical passwords to find if any one of them matches the password of your cloud storage server. You might not believe it but people who are new to computing often do not change the default username and password designated by the company offering cloud storage. More often than not, they let the user name stay as "username" and password as "password." In other cases, they use passwords, which are a combination of their personal or company's name along with some other characters. In 2016 the security of "Adult Friend Finder," the leading portal that allows adult people to find friends of their liking from a huge database, was breached 412.2 million times. In 2017, the security of Equifax was breached 143 million times. Other companies who have had their security compromised include eBay, JP Morgan Chase, Yahoo, Home Depot, and Adobe to name a few. In all of these instances, the hackers gained access to personal information of the members of those sites, including their debit and credit card details. Armed with this information, the hackers stole Billions of Pounds from the accounts of those members. Can you imagine the scenario if this happens with the data of your online store? Your stand to lose the faith of your clients, and might end up winding your business too.
Recovering from a hack
The first thing towards recovering from such a hack is to change the admin username and password. After this, hire professionals who will use their knowledge to find out how the hackers breached security of your online database, as well as find if your storage space contains viruses and malware and eliminate them. You should also get all the computers connected to the cloud network checked for infections, especially the folder synchronised with the cloud database. You should also password protect the synchronised file on the linked computers to prevent future attacks.