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What is Dark Web Scanning? Why It Is Important?

Why Dark Web Scanning is So Vital & Affordable?

Are your employees’ credentials – their email addresses and passwords – for sale on the dark web? With a thorough dark web scan by a trusted provider, you can find out.

Because it is often misunderstood, let’s first define exactly what is the dark web.

Essentially, the internet has 3 layers, two of which are used harmlessly every day. The surface web consists of all the websites most users visit daily — the public sites crawled, indexed and rendered easily by common search engines like Google and Bing.

The deep web, level two, is another safe layer comprised of unindexed databases not crawled by search engines, sites like browser-based email accounts or registration-required forums. The deep web is massive, comprising approximately 95% of all internet content.

The third layer, the dark web, is the one we all need to worry about and here’s why: it’s the playground of the lawless.

Dark Web Scan

It frankly doesn’t matter that the dark makes up only a tiny slice of the internet (less than a fraction of 1%), that it can only be reached through a special browser like TOR (The Onion Router) most people have never used or that up to 75% of dark web sites are actually inactive.

What matters is the fact that more than half of all active dark web sites are used for criminal activities. Thus, when a hacker manages to build a list of stolen credentials, the dark web is where he goes to sell that information.

If most internet users never visit the dark web, how can an organization know any if any of its employees’ credentials have been stolen?

Only by using a service like Dark Web ID from Cynexlink can a company discover if any of its user/password combinations can be found online – and if they’re part of the 80,000 new compromises exposed daily.

Importance of Dark Web Scanning?

  • Compromised credentials are used to conduct further criminal activity
  • 60% of employees use the same password for all services such as network login, social media and SaaS business applications, exponentially increasing the potential damage from a single compromised credential – even one that does not originate from within a company network
  • Over 75% of compromised credentials are discovered after the fact – either at the time of breach or when reported to the victim’s organization by law enforcement
  • Size does NOT matter: 43% of online attacks are aimed at small businesses and nearly 70% of SMBs experienced cyber attacks in 2018.
  • Once breached, 70% of companies with fewer than 250 employees were forced offline for a period of time, 37% experienced measurable financial loss and fully 10% were forced out of business altogether

Because over 80% of breaches begin with stolen credentials, real-time monitoring is a vital layer of protection. The good news is this: live, ongoing dark web scanning is a very inexpensive solution that even the smallest companies can afford.

Even better news: we’ll help make it even more affordable by offering one free scan with up to 100 exposed records so you can learn right away if any of your company’s credentials have been compromised.

What are you waiting for? Contact us to learn more about Dark Web ID today.

What do you think? Please let us know by commenting below!

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