“Boss, I think that someone stole sensitive information from my system.” Those are words that no computer user ever wants to utter and no manager ever wants to hear. Unfortunately, they are heard in offices around the world every day. In a recent study, the Center for Strategic and International Studies discovered that cybercrime costs American businesses $100 billion in lost revenue and 508,000 lost jobs. Nobody wants their computer to become a part of that statistic.

Protecting systems against hackers is not the daunting challenge that it may seem. The vast majority of system compromises occur because of failures to apply basic security measures. The tools and techniques taught in security certification programs are tried-and-true ways to fortify your systems against attack. The challenge facing IT and business professionals is successfully moving these ideas out of the certification textbook and applying them consistently across their organizations. In this article, we examine five specific ways that hackers can infiltrate your systems and explain how you can protect yourself against these attacks. Think of these five tips as your entry-level certification for safe computing!

Read more: Five Ways To Secure Your Systems Against Hackers

Published in the May 2014 issue of Certification Magazine