How To Protect Your Business From The Heartbleed Bug

The Heartbleed Bug is the latest in a long line of software exploits with the potential to steal your information and it was a vulnerability for 2 years. 2 years!!

On April 7th the Heartbleed Bug was exposed and fixed in OpenSSL. OpenSSL is a piece of software that is widely used to secure and encrypt website communications.

Swift Systems is aware that security threats are constantly changing and evolving and we work diligently to protect our internal and customer networks at all times.

Within 24 hours after the announcement, Swift IT took steps to identify and remediate any internal systems that may have been affected by the Heartbleed vulnerability. The good news is that the vast majority of our internal and customers’ systems are not affected by Heartbleed. Heartbleed is only present on certain versions of Linux operating systems which use the OpenSSL protocol. Windows operating systems are not affected.

If you follow these simple 3 best practices, you will proactively reduce your chance of infection.

• Use complex, string passwords or better yet a password generator like KeePass. And please, please do not use the same password for all of your accounts.
• Do not open attachments or click on links from email senders you do not know. An executable file (.exe) is a huge red flag and you should contact your IT immediately. Use this same rule when on social media.
• Ensure that your computer has the latest security updates and patches. If in doubt, run your malware scan and update software to newer versions.

Malware and other network attacks are a constant threat. These latest attacks are further proof that security awareness is a full time job. It’s not about the malware flavor of the month, but about diligence at all times.

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