Has your wifi left you wide open to cybercrime?

Abstract

Picture your own home. You've spent significant budget ensuring your property is physically secure, only to discover that criminals have been silently robbing you, without so much as setting foot on your front porch. You believed you'd created a fortress but didn't notice the hole in the wall that left you vulnerable to criminals. It's every single homeowner's worst nightmare. However, it's also a very real metaphor for many businesses in the UK who, despite becoming more vulnerable, have left the door to cybercrime unknowingly ajar. IT security is now a corporate priority and businesses are investing significant funds into sophisticated firewalls that enable their systems to become effectively inaccessible. But many of those businesses fail to notice the growing hole in their IT defences that leaves both the business and its workers exposed – their wifi network. Defective wifi practice, along with an insufficient understanding of the obvious signs of cyberthreats, can unwittingly provide cyber criminals with surreptitious access to sensitive information, explains Greig Schofield of Netmetix.