Are You Helping Cyber Criminals Deliver Malicious Code to Your Customers & Friends?

In the 90s malicious code was primarily delivered by email. These days Internet criminals mostly use websites to deliver their “surprise packages”. 30,000 new hacked websites, on average, are identified every day (source Sophos Labs, a web security company) distributing their payload randomly to any viewer. Many small business owners think that viruses are delivered only from adult sites, online gambling, etc.  ……..but in reality the majority of these 30,000 sites are legitimate small businesses that are unknowingly passing on malicious code packages for the cyber criminals based here in the US and in foreign countries.

The Year We Got More Serious About Security….

In 2008, it happened to us here at Grey Visual!  We left an experimental E-store on our server unprotected… and paid the price when hackers used it as an “entry door” to our server. We had to entirely rebuild our server at a new host under significant pressure. The host actually became our adversary in this situation.  Not only did we have to rebuild… but also take time to de-list our domain from industry blacklists, as well. Not fun.  It gave us a new appreciation for the importance of internet security…. first hand!

“But We’re Just Small Potatoes. Those Hackers Won’t Bother with Us!”

Another widely held misconception is that hackers only go after large enterprises or government organizations. When mentioning this to clients, I often hear the following “but we are just ‘small potatoes’, why should hackers be interested in us?”. Hackers are “equal opportunity destroyers”. These online criminals have automated scanning tools searching the web looking for any vulnerable website to infect with their “viral packages”. Their target could be your little blog, a small business website or a huge corporate site. Wherever there is a vulnerability they will happily capitalize on it to spread their wares and increase the size of their “launch base” for DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks. In fact, Grey Visual clients experience an average of 5 to 10 malicious attempts on their websites daily! (Ask for your website security log if you’d like to see these attempts on your site.)

This is why we have made a point of great security for all of you. Is it 100% guaranteed?  Well, anything that can be coded… can be de-coded by someone.  But Hackers go after the low hanging fruit that can be quickly plucked with little effort. We have plugged the most commonly used security holes. And best of all…. we are constantly monitoring and updating your sites to keep these “hacker doorways” closed. This is important because every time there are new WordPress, theme or plugin updates…. new conflicts arise. It’s important to constantly monitor these updates.