We’ve been sharing many articles and stories about different ransomware viruses that are out there as well as the companies that have fallen victim. If you think this can’t happen to you and your business, you may be in for a very expensive lesson.
On May 9th, 2016, a neighbor of ours in our building stopped by asking for assistance because all of his data was encrypted as he was a victim of ransomware. We are now in talks with him to bring him on board and assist him with trying to restore his systems without needing to pay the ransom, which the FBI urges everyone not to do.
Just as the US does not negotiate with terrorists or pay ransoms because if they did it would just encourage more attacks, the same goes for these types of smaller-scale cyber-attacks. Every time a business, hospital, or other organization pays the ransom, it just reinforces the success of their criminal activities. So what should you do? Contact the FBI if you’re a victim and work with your IT support services to help retrieve your data. Before you are a victim, you should do the following two things:
Prevention: Prepare using both “awareness training for employees and robust technical prevention controls,” including access controls, updated anti-malware tools and ensuring admin-level accounts remain locked down.
Backup/restoration: Create “a solid business continuity plan” for dealing with a ransomware attack, including backup up data, verifying backups’ integrity as well as ensuring backups aren’t connected to systems or networks that they’re backing up.
If you currently do not have an IT support provider or are not sure of their capabilities, contact us at Optfinity and we will do a free assessment for you to ensure your systems are properly set-up and protected. Don’t wait till after it happens like our neighbor! It will cost more and you run the risk of losing weeks, months, or even years of data!!
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