By Doug Cheung
It seems as though hardly a day can go by without a major security breach reaching the news cycle. And, SMBs (small and medium sized businesses) are at an even greater risk of security breaches: recent research has found that they are the targets and victims of 58% of all cyber attacks.
The unfortunate fact is that the majority of standard security tools are simply not enough. Similar to dealing with an illness when it has become critical, rather than finding the symptoms early and taking preventative measures, victims of internet-based threats are often left dealing with the consequent damage that has been done after the cyber threat has hit. By the time internal security systems discover an issue, the damage may well have already been done, many times with major repercussions. Fixing security breaches takes up a lot of time and can be expensive; plus, the longer a breach takes to detect, the likelihood is that the cost to rectify the damage will be compounded.
Delving into the Deep Web
The emphasis needs to be on prevention, by looking for those potential risks in advance, rather than waiting for an attack to land on your doorstep and that means scouring the Dark Web. Also referred to as the Dark Net, the Dark Web is the part of the internet where many illegal and criminal activities take place.  The problem for most small businesses and their service providers is that the Dark Web is not a place most would want to visit. It does sound daunting, even the name infers that there are dangers to be wary of. Navigation of this deep ocean of anonymity and its multiple layers requires extensive expertise, and it is often an unsafe area of the connected online universe to visit.
Fortunately, advanced technology to trawl the Dark Web, which has been used for years by enterprise-sized organizations such as financial institutions, is now available for SMBs as well.  NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence has been designed specifically to address the needs of small businesses.
NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence
NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence is a service that browses the open, deep and dark web to deliver real-time, automated and actionable threat intelligence, which then alerts small businesses of any potential attacks and violations of their digital assets and identities from the dark web. Â This breakthrough application brings sophisticated enterprise-grade technology previously only available to large organizations with big budgets.
While the technology powering this new service is extremely advanced, the concept is simple. NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence is designed to search the Dark Web and look for threats, for instance whether domains or email addresses have been misappropriated, or ID or credit card details made available. By uncovering potential problems earlier, such as the point at which that information is up for sale, then action can be swiftly taken.
NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence is a cloud-based service that is completely independent of any hardware, making it easy to adopt with no impact on existing IT, and it will co-exist alongside existing security systems. The customer simply needs to give the service provider the email addresses, domains, credit cards or credentials it wishes to protect.   Protection of one’s privacy has been given paramount importance within the design of NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence with the guarantee that all the customer’s data is stored on a server, anonymized and protected. No NETGEAR personnel nor MSP personnel can see this data.
Once in place, NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence provides the following powerful advantages:
- Domain protections – fight phishing and cybersquatting
- Email credential theft alert – prevent a top cause of company site infiltration
- Credit card number theft alert – early warning before a transaction attempt
- Personal identification number theft alert – prevent criminal use of personal identification numbers
Why it’s good news for MSPs and MSSPs
NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence also creates potential new revenue for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) or Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) wishing to expand their portfolios in this fast-growing security market sector. Â Â As well as being the perfect complement to their existing offerings, NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence opens the potential for innovative business models, for example, charging SMBs a flat rate per month for a whole suite of network and security-related services. Customer support would be managed by the MSPs building their partnership and looking after satisfied customers.
It is a win-win situation for both MSPs and their clients. NETGEAR Dark Web Intelligence provides small businesses the assurance and confidence that expert efforts are being made to protect them from the outside-in, and all for at an affordable and predictable cost.
The Dark Web is too big a threat to continue to ignore – now is the time to take pre-emptive action.