The best web security software in the era of Digital Transformation
Individuals, companies, institutions and governments alike have been promoting the so-called “digital transformation” for the past years and boasting about their achievements in this area. Its costs, however, are becoming clearer by the day, with companies and organizations falling prey to cyber attacks all over the world. In this article we discuss why the current situation makes it crucial to look for and invest in the best Internet protection available.
1. Digital transformation: the cyber risks associated with moving quickly into the future
“Digital transformation” has been high on the agendas of governments and organizations for many years now. However, for several countries it was the Covid pandemic that brought about the actual transition towards digitalization. The term digitalization itself takes on different meanings depending on the actor behind it:
» For governments and public administrations, it means mainly digitizing all their citizens’ data and creating an online way for the public administration to interact with each individual in their country;
» For companies and, more in general, organizations it means not only being capable of offering their services online, but also making it possible for their employees to connect remotely to the company network and work from wherever.
1.1 Digitalization: increasing amounts of data accessible from weaker entry points
In all contexts, digitalization processes share two fundamental features:
» On the one hand, more and more data are stored electronically, making it possible to access them notwithstanding the location of the employee, user …. or hacker!
» On the other hand, while remote work has made it possible to keep the business going during times of lockdown, it has also created a whole new series of vulnerabilities. Indeed, as Forbes has recently written, “Increasing the number of remote workers adds to your risk profile by bringing more vulnerable endpoints into your ecosystem”.
The combination of these factors has meant that, simultaneously, hackers have become aware of the quickly increasing amount of interesting and remunerative data stored digitally, as well as of the possibility to easily gain access to them through the employees and organizations’ users.
In this context, providing your company with the best web security software available on the market becomes essential, together with the more stringent need of calibrating costs and benefits given the uncertainty of the period.
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2. Social engineering: the clever way to take advantage of digitalization
While IT managers were developing ways to make everything available online to the company users, hackers were engineering ways to access these data remotely. “Social engineering” seems to be one of their favorite ways. It consists in studying the victims of a potential attack in order to understand what their weak point is and to identify what sort of contents they show interest in and hence are more likely to click on. Afterwards, attractive emails are produced, to induce the user to click on them and the scammers then send them out.
Attacks that exploit social engineering can be targeted, meaning they aim for a specific victim or company, or else the email can be sent to a long list of receivers, hoping that at least one fish will fall into the net (a so-called “phishing attempt”).
Recent statistics about the United Kingdom show that, in the 12-month period starting with June 2021, 39% of UK firms experienced a cyber attack and in 83% of the cases the vector was phishing attempts.
Social engineering and phishing attempts both count on one factor: human curiosity and weakness. Indeed, it is finally the employee or user who decides to click on the attractive email. In an article titled “Cyber attacks surging amidst cost of living crisis” dated July 2022, TechRound highlighted how in the UK scammers are currently “sending phishing emails and messages offering rebates on energy bills to play on peoples and businesses vulnerabilities”.
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3. Driving factors for the best web security software
Our discussion up to now points in one direction: since individuals are curious and always looking for solutions to their problems and given the fact that hackers know this and engineer ways to take advantage of this, training users to recognize threats is not enough anymore. In order to achieve the best Internet protection you must invest in tools that will prevent your organization from being the victim of the next cyber attack.
So, what aspects should you consider when you look for the best web security software? First and foremost, look at the updating of the security tool. With threats changing so quickly it is important that the solution you choose is constantly updated exploiting the latest technologies available and that the updated protection becomes available for the user straight away.
Moreover, the best web security softwares work on speed of response, the so-called latency. Indeed, a web security service is perceived as good only if the users are not slowed down by it. Finally, the perception of what is the best Internet protection changes depending on who you ask, and so customization options are becoming a crucial feature when you choose the most suitable solution for your organization.
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4. FlashStart: the best Internet protection for your network
FlashStart offers a competitive solution for web security: a cloud-based Internet filter that is fast, constantly updated exploiting the latest technologies and that comes with great customization options. These features are quickly making it one of the best web protection services available online.
4.1 FlashStart: constantly updated Internet protection, everywhere
As mentioned above, given how rapidly cyber threats develop, the updating of the software is probably the most important aspect to consider while looking for the best web protection available. FlashStart uses the latest technologies available on the market to constantly update its Internet content filter.
More in detail, FlashStart uses algorithms of artificial intelligence to continuously scan the web looking for new threats. Moreover, thanks to machine learning techniques, the algorithms can “learn” from the behaviors of the threats and quickly identify new developments in existing threats, as well as “foreseeing” where the next threat may stem from.
Once a threat is identified, it is added to the denied lists available on the FlashStart cloud. Being based on the cloud has two advantages for the user:
» The updates become instantly available and so the user will always have access to the best web protection provided in a given moment;
» The updates are automatically adopted by the tool with no need for action on the side of the user, meaning that no long system reboots are required in order for the user to enjoy the best web protection available.
Finally, since the cloud has no “place”, there is one further advantage that comes with it: location is not an issue and the users can enjoy the best web protection wherever they are in the world. FlashStart has worked also on this aspect: indeed, the FlashStart tool can count on an Anycast Network with around 30 nodes spread all over the world, that help to make its latency of response almost zero and to make FlashStart one of the fastest tools on the market.
4.2 Exclusive feature: GeoBlocking
In its constant desire to improve the service offered to its clients, and given the current trends in the security panorama, FlashStart has developed one further, exclusive option: GeoBlocking. This is a feature that helps you avoid inadvertently accessing websites located in the most dangerous cybercrime areas in the world.
In the protection setting panel you can choose to block outright connection to any websites whose IP address can be traced back to countries deemed at high risk of cyber criminality. We discussed this feature in depth in the article available here, which you can freely access on our blog.
4.3 Customizing FlashStart: the best Internet protection given your needs
Finally, the FlashStart tool offers a wide range of customization options, something that is making it gain positions in the rankings of best web protection softwares.
First of all, FlashStart automatically blocks all dangerous contents but then allows you to choose whether to block also inappropriate and distracting contents. The first refer to adult contents like porn and dating apps but also violent contents, gambling and websites linked to drugs. Distracting contents, on the other hand, include all sorts of websites that may end up reducing the efficiency of your employees: social networks, streaming platforms, online shopping websites, and much more.
Secondly, with the FlashStart tool you can schedule the blocks: while dangerous contents are constantly blocked, you can decide when to enable certain blocks linked, for example, to productivity. So, you may wish to block access to social media during work hours but then allow it during breaks, and the FlashStart tool permits you to do it.
Finally, FlashStart also allows you to easily replicate your company’s organizational structure in its settings and assign different security profiles depending on the user group. This is possible thanks to the fact that the tool is fully integrated with the Microsoft Active Directory and with Google WorkSuite.
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You can activate the FlashStart® Cloud protection on any sort of Router and Firewall to secure desktop and mobile devices and IoT devices on local networks.
