Combat Cybercrime at your Independent Insurance Agency
Simple security steps every agency should take
Even though SIS’ secure hosting environment for our Partner XE agency management system provides clients with access to secure servers housed off-site at an impregnable data center, around the clock physical security, internet and server firewall data protection, malware protection & anti-virus and weekly security patch updates to Windows, we feel like you can never have enough information about protecting your data to combat cybercrime.
Awhile back we blogged about software as a service and how your Partner XE agency management system’s hosted model provides you with redundant backups of your data and protects you against computer failures, natural disasters and more. We also talked about how the fact that off-site data storage increases your protection against from hackers.
Today, we want to share some good information which was put out by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, Inc. on cybercrime. While SIS and Partner XE offer the high level of protection necessary for your important system data, there are some key things you can do at your office as well to cover your computers and files.
Danielle Johnson’s article “Combat Cybercrime and Protect Your Agency with Simple Security Steps,” discusses the extent of the problem and outlines steps you need to take to protect your customer’s valuable information.
She suggests that “to assess the risks associated with a cyber intrusion of your agency’s online systems and critical client data, ask yourself a number of questions,” including:
- Does the network firewall include anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-spam services along with content filtering and intrusion prevention, detection and real-time reporting?
- At the individual PC level, does each computer have centrally updated and monitored anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-spam software loaded?
- Are your computers set up to automatically update your operating system and applications for the latest available security and critical updates?
- Does your agency back-up critical files in case of an issue that disables your systems?
For more information and questions to consider, read the full article…
