As a service provider, you have a responsibility not only to preserve and improve your own network security but also to serve the greater public good by educating your customers on abuse prevention. Doing so will reduce the amount of work that lands on your own abuse desk, as well as help, fight global cybercrime, and network abuse.

Why It’s Important To Help Your Customers With Cyber Hygiene

Cybercrime and network abuse are on the rise. Akamai’s 2016 State Of The Internet Security Report shows that online attacks are escalating. From Q1 2015 to Q1 2016, there was a 125% increase in global DDoS attacks. 

See also: Network Abuse: How It Affects Online Users

In this type of environment, it becomes the responsibility of all service providers to look beyond their own borders and actively work with their customers to prevent network abuse and improve network security.

One of the best ways to do this is to educate your customers on the cyber hygiene best practices, such as:

1. Don’t just build a moat: Encourage customers to protect their data and not just the perimeter. Many firms spend most of their budget on firewalls, but this is not enough considering the advanced tools today’s hackers have at their disposal. To limit security breaches, businesses need to move from guarding the perimeter to micro-segmentation, which involves building many little walls around parts of the business containing valuable data. This way, if the perimeter is breached, the hackers’ access and damage potential are limited.
2. Look for inside threats: Employees are often the biggest network security risk. An unwitting employee who clicks on an unknown email link can expose the entire company to millions of dollars in damages. Even ‘abuse-aware’ employees can be fooled by increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks. Encourage your customers to educate their staff on cyber threats and to train them on security awareness.
3. Become more vigilant: Instead of just waiting for an attack, companies can take an active approach by monitoring their network more efficiently. This includes ranking each device based on the sensitivity of the data it handles. Data, in turn, should be analyzed. Businesses need to use multi-factor authentication and data encryption to ensure all critical data is protected.
4. Become more proactive: Encourage your customers to implement security audits and harden all their devices as per their policies and guidelines. New vulnerabilities and threats should be constantly monitored and the appropriate patches implemented when necessary.
5. Invest in cybersecurity: Educate your customers on the huge financial risks of not taking appropriate security measures to protect sensitive data. Tell them about the latest security software and solutions and encourage them to always make sure these are up-to-date.

See also: The Importance Of Network Security In Any Organization

A Cleaner Network Benefits Everyone

A service provider that educates its customers and actively works to prevent abuse will save a considerable amount in the long run. DDoS attacks can last just minutes but can lead to loss of revenue for your customers. If the attack lasts for hours, this can be substantial. A cleaner network also uses less bandwidth, operates more efficiently, and has happier customers.

How To Optimize Abuse Handling

Protecting your network from abuse is an on-going task for even the most vigilant abuse desk team. To help teams gain clarity and take faster action, AbuseHQ from Abusix integrates everything into existing infrastructures. It performs continuous abuse and threat processing both in real-time and retroactively, allowing you to gain insights buried deep inside your noisy network’s abuse data – regardless of the network resources your customers are using. To find out more about how AbuseHQ can help your abuse desk perform at its best, talk to our team to arrange a trial.