Digital Encode CEO gives tips protecting against hackers, safe operating centre
The chief technical officer of Digital Encode, an indigenous IT servicing company, Mr. Seyi Akindeinde has given strong tips on the best way to protect digital devices including laptops, tablets and smartphones from the activities of hackers.
In an interview, he said “For your laptop, the individual or organization has to install the latest patches of the operating system that comes with the laptop. A lot of times, people get laptops and out of over excitement, they use it without installing some things”.
“The first thing to do is to get the latest updates or patches of software that you will be running, then get a proper antivirus, not the free one that people will download and use for free but the ones you pay for and continue to update every day. Get anti-malware, encryption process that way you can do.
“If it is your phone, make sure you don’t open your WhatsApp or any file from somebody. Sometimes you get a video file asking you to watch, these files are embedded in viruses and malware. Make sure the person sending you file is someone you know. Lastly, a lot of people that love connecting to free Wi-Fi access should know the authenticity of the source because a lot of those things are traps so users should be careful and do the things mentioned. If these things are done, you will be at least 99.9 per cent secure.
Explaining more on Security Operating Centre (SOC), Akindeinde said “When you talk about protection against hackers, what is very important is to have a clear enterprise risk mitigation strategy and because you need to look at how to prevent, so it is a three dimensional process. You need to be able to prevent, detect and then respond”.
According to him, “What the security operation center does is to ensure that there is an active monitoring in place to prevent. It is just like a normal robbery, before robbers will come to your environment, they will do some surveillance to see how to attack the environment, it is also the same with the cyber space, before hackers will attack you, and they will gather information”. In his further submission, Digital Encode executive noted that “Every organization or country in the world is recognized by their IP address”.
“An IP address is a logical means of identification on the internet and so at that time cognizance means they are scanning or checking for so when somebody is at a point of scanning you, we trigger an alarm to tell you that somebody is scanning your IP address. What we do from the security operations is prevention, detection and in responding, we will initiate communication with the organizations that are connected to us to say this IP is trying to get to you, we ask if we can block it.
“Even at digital encode, the reality is that you cannot stop hackers who are trying to attack you, so if you try to scan our IP address, we block you automatically, so in a nutshell, what the security operation does is to provide services proactively in terms of preventing hackers from hacking into your environment and having a way to detect it and also giving a prompt response,” Akindeinde disclosed.
