Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue I, 2014

Technology By Luke Engelhardt Protecting Customer Data and Your Business Identify and remediate online vulnerabilities now! D o you know there’s an easy way to identify and predict how cybercriminals might get into your organization? Fortunately for already-busy franchisees, the process isn’t as complicated as you may think. Vulnerability management is the simplest way for franchisees to locate and patch security holes before wouldbe data thieves find and exploit them. Vulnerability management is the process, implementation, and controls that identify the location of weaknesses in an infrastructure that could act as secret tunnels into your network. Ultimately, it’s a critical foundation on which to build your business’s network security. While there is no such thing as being hack-proof, data thieves and cybercriminals are notoriously lazy. They would much rather go after low-hanging fruit than invest the time and trouble to break into a secured network or website. By ensuring that your business addresses and resolves known vulnerabilities, you dramatically limit your organization’s exposure to hackers. Before reading any further, you should first determine whether you have control over your own network security and vulnerability management. Some franchisors negotiate deals with vendors that take care of vulnerability management from the franchisor end. In other cases, the entire security process is up to each individual franchisee. In either case, some of the work ends up falling upon the franchisee. Since accountability varies on a case-by-case basis, I recommend ]

Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue I, 2014 | Page 88