Are end-of-life servers the nail in your security coffin?

In the time it’s taken you to read this sentence, Microsoft has defended against 4,500 password attacks.

Scary, right?

With cyberattacks increasing by 74% in the last year alone, cybersecurity must be at the forefront of your mind.

Why are cyberattacks increasing?

One word: Covid.

Historically, most companies stored data in-house, with the vast majority of people working in the office, making it far easier to defend systems.

But since the pandemic, remote working has skyrocketed, as well as the adoption of apps such as Office 365 and Google Workplace, making it much tougher to defend against attacks.

Add to this that cybersecurity protocols have suffered, partially because of difficulties in recruiting sufficient IT talent but also due to the challenges in regulating remote employees.

It’s no surprise criminals have taken advantage.

All eyes on you

No one is safe from cybercriminals, but small businesses (SMEs) and accountants are especially at risk.

Did you know that 25% of SMEs experienced a security breach in the last year?

Cyberattacks are no longer being limited to large businesses; in fact, SMEs are being targeted far more because the cost of conducting attacks has decreased exponentially + they’re less likely to have robust security in place.

As for accountants, PWC estimates that accountants are 30% more likely to be hacked.

Why? Well, accountants are attractive targets due to the sensitive customer information they hold.

More content: read this blog for more insight on cybersecurity in accountancy

Read here

Exploiting the Achilles' heel

Perhaps what’s most concerning is how quickly cybercriminals can now exploit flaws in a system’s security.

If a vulnerability is found, on average, it takes 14 days to exploit that weakness, 60 days for criminals to make dangerous code publicly available and 120 days for tools to be built which scan businesses for that specific vulnerability.

Windows Server 2012 & SQL Server 2012 end-of-life

A couple of popular on-premise servers have reached or are reaching their end-of-life (EOL).

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 reached its end-of-life on July 12, 2022, and Windows Server 2012 will reach its end-of-life on October 10, 2023.

Why am I telling you this? Well, when a server reaches end-of-life, the provider ceases issuing security updates, meaning V U L N E R A B I L I T I E S won’t be patched.

It’s actually incredibly common for cybercriminals to pivot their focus to EOL software as they know those using it are easy targets.

Moving from on-premise servers to hosting

Whether you’re using these end-of-life servers or simply want more security, moving to a hosted solution could be the answer.

In essence, with hosting, your provider houses your systems on their state-of-the-art private servers, offering you the flexibility to work anywhere, alongside unbeaten security.

At IRIS, we offer various options, whether that’s sorting your on-premise server, moving you to our IRIS Hosted Desktop on our private cloud or to our IRIS Anywhere Virtual Desktop solution on Microsoft Azure cloud.

To find out more, contact us today.

To learn more about cybersecurity and our potential solutions, check out our on-demand webinar.

Watch here