How the MUNI Ransomware Attack Highlights the Importance of Cybersecurity for Your Business

Several weeks ago, San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which operates the MUNI transit system, was struck by a major ransomware attack. The cybercriminals demanded 100 Bitcoins—roughly $70,000 at the current exchange rate—in exchange for restoring the agency’s systems. In response, SFMTA chose not to pay the ransom, fearing it would encourage future attacks. While the MUNI system continued to operate by allowing passengers to ride for free, this breach serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities any organization can face, regardless of size.

What Happened During the MUNI Ransomware Attack?

The ransomware attack hit MUNI’s systems hard, infecting over 2,000 devices, including servers, workstations, and ticketing machines. Experts believe the attack was not a deliberate target but rather the result of an accidental infection. It’s suspected that a single employee unknowingly opened a malicious file, which allowed the malware to spread throughout the network.

SFMTA’s recovery process was relatively quick. By the end of the weekend, they had restored their systems and resumed charging passengers. However, this incident highlights two crucial questions every organization should ask themselves:

1. How would your business handle a similar attack?
2. How quickly could you recover without paying the ransom?

The Real Cost of Cybersecurity Neglect

While SFMTA is a large organization that could afford to absorb the financial and operational impact of a few days without charging fares, many businesses—especially smaller ones—would not be able to recover as easily. A single compromised employee could put your entire system at risk, leading to prolonged downtime, loss of revenue, and potential damage to your reputation.

The cost of downtime, lost productivity, and the expense of recovering from a ransomware attack can be devastating for small and mid-sized businesses. A cyber attack could disrupt your operations for days, weeks, or even longer if your recovery plan isn’t up to par.

The Importance of Strong Backups and Quick Recovery

One of the most critical aspects of protecting your business from a ransomware attack is having a robust backup and recovery plan. The speed at which SFMTA was able to recover their systems—without paying the ransom—was largely due to their effective backup strategy. Without reliable, up-to-date backups, the risk of losing valuable data increases exponentially in the event of a cyber attack.

How quickly could your company restore its systems if a ransomware attack were to happen today? Are your backups secure, encrypted, and easy to access during a crisis? If you’re unsure, now is the time to reassess your cybersecurity plan.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late: Assess Your Cybersecurity

At Optfinity, we understand the importance of proactive cybersecurity. We offer free cybersecurity assessments to help you understand exactly where your vulnerabilities lie and how you can improve your defenses. Whether it’s strengthening your backups, training employees to recognize phishing attacks, or ensuring your systems are secure, we can help you build a strong foundation to prevent cyber attacks.

Don’t wait until you’re the next victim of ransomware. Reach out to Optfinity today for a free assessment, and make sure your systems are secure before it’s too late.

This group has attacked other businesses before, demanding large ransoms in return for not posting their sensitive data. When WestPark Capital, a recent victim, turned down their “handsome business proposal”, The Dark Overlord published several sensitive documents.

What can these companies do now? Nothing, really; at this point there is no way for them to steal back their information from the thieves. But you can learn a lesson the easy way by boosting your business’ defenses.

You can implement layered defenses, review your security policies, and think about training your employees to be wary of scams and other attacks. If you’re not sure if your company has these or how robust they might be, Optfinity provides free assessments to all companies. Contact us right away and we can let you know just how vulnerable your data may be, what steps you need to take to improve your security, and if there are any other weaknesses regarding your full IT infrastructure. IT safety and security are our number one concerns with regards to our clients.

1. Leverage cloud internally – From the business perspective, utilizing cloud-based PSA tools, RMM tools, virus-monitoring, backups, etc., the cloud is probably the best way with no or very minimal capital expenses to get started.

It’s an operating expense. You can ramp up and pay as you need to. That gives you a lot more flexibility than in the past, where you had to acquire servers, acquire data center space, acquire everything else and pay for the licenses, which made it very difficult to start up.

2. Sell cloud – The cloud provides a lot of benefits. From scalability and elasticity, to the ability to ramp up clients, you can do things that you couldn’t have done in the past because they didn’t have those capabilities, financial and otherwise. Understand the cloud and be able to offer cloud services.

3. Hire with service in mind – As a service provider, you’re selling a service – a solution. Yes, you can productize it, but you’re not selling a product. You’re being judged by the services you provide. Hire people that are going to be personable, that are going to be able to help a customer get through a problem, whether it means knowing the answer right away or not. You can always teach the technical skills. You need to focus on hiring the right people internally that can do the projects that you need as well as focus on your core strengths.

Outsource the rest: your human resources, your payroll. You can go as far as your sales.

Understanding the Basics of HIPAA

Breaking the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act can quickly add up for many businesses regulated by this act. Most of you might know this as HIPAA.

Ast a company millions of dollars annually, even if the breach is perpetrated by a contracted third party.

These third-party contractors are often times IT companies, so ensuring your IT provider is knowledgeable with HIPAA regulations is a huge priority and should be a mitigating factor when selecting one.

What are the top breaches of HIPAA? 

The top breaches of HIPAA are theft, unauthorized access/disclosure, and hacking. Theft includes not just the loss of cyber data, but also the taking of physical property, such as laptops.

Leaving documents out in the open or failing to dispose of them properly falls under the disclosure reason, and malware, including ransomware, is a good example of hacking.

Read the full article to understand more the complexities of the ways your business needs to protect itself with regards to HIPAA, with even some basics as ensuring cables and locks are attached to laptops to prevent basic theft.

The Fallout of a HIPAA Breach

Breaking the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) can result in significant financial consequences for businesses subject to its regulations. Even if a data breach originates from a third-party contractor, companies may still face millions in penalties.

Breaking the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) can be costly for businesses under its regulations. Commonly known as HIPAA, violations can lead to millions in penalties, even if a third-party contractor is responsible.

Often, these contractors are IT companies. So, it’s critical to choose an IT provider familiar with HIPAA regulations. This knowledge should be a key factor in your decision.

Please contact Optfinity today for more information.

We all hate the fact that our phone batteries run out of juice so quickly. But it’s no wonder they do since we rely on them for more and more of our daily lives, from GPS to entertainment to work emails, and once in a while, a phone call. One thing to keep in mind, they last a whole lot longer than phone batteries of the past thanks to lithium-ion technology. Follow these three tips to help extend your battery’s life and keep it as healthy as possible.

Make sure to avoid heat, this includes leaving your phone in a hot car, taking it into the sauna with you at the gym, or leaving it out in the hot sun when you’re at the beach or lounging by the pool. If you must take your phone into the sun, keep it shaded and as cool as possible.

Don’t let your phone die. Letting your phone’s battery drain till it dies is extremely bad for lithium-ion batteries. And lastly, if you’re going to leave your phone unused for a significant amount of time, for example, going on an international trip where you won’t be using your phone, make sure you store it with at least a 50% charge.

It is important to remember that this advice mainly applies to lithium-ion batteries, so in the event you have an old phone that still uses NMH batteries, seek out another tip. If you’re ready to upgrade or have questions on what is the best mobile phone for your business use, contact Optfinity and we’ll be glad you provide you with more information and tips.

If you have a Dropbox account, be aware that hackers have stolen over 60 million account details from the online cloud storage platform company. Dropbox says it has already forced password resets within the last week, but to be safe, you may want to change your password, if you have not done so recently.

According to the company, “Our security teams are always watching out for new threats to our users. As part of these ongoing efforts, we learned about an old set of Dropbox user credentials (email addresses plus hashed and salted passwords) that we believe were obtained in 2012. Our analysis suggests that the credentials relate to an incident we disclosed around that time”.

It is also highly recommended that you change any other passwords for sites which shared the same password as your Dropbox account. Remember to use strong passwords, use a different password for each account, and utilize two-step verification, when possible. If you have any other questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to us at Optfinity anytime!

If you can control how often you and your company have to change your passwords, you may want to stop the task of mandating forced password changes. Frequent password changes do little to improve security and could possibly make security worse.

If you cannot change this regulation within your company, you may want to at least provide your staff with some helpful advice when changing passwords. By just changing a few letters, numbers, or symbols, new, safe, secure passwords can be created that are still easily memorized by the user. Some examples are given in the article.

There are other tricks for password storage such as sites like lastpass.com which allows a user to safely store usernames and passwords for every single online account. The service is free to a point. For more tips and tricks, software solutions, or a free assessment, contact Optfinity today!

The assumed nature of the breach is perhaps due to internal user error. This is, by far, one of the major reasons why data breaches happen. This usually occurs when an employee accidentally gives out sensitive credentials, like passwords and usernames, to the wrong person. With one phishing email, scam phone call, or dubious website, a cybercriminal can have access to your company’s internal data.

Do not think this is limited to just large corporations. Many small businesses are finding themselves prone to these types of breaches. Ensure all of your employees know the dangers out there and how put in place procedures to mitigate these incidents. Optfinity has many tools at its disposal for its clients to help companies maintain their security and safety, and help to ensure employees are fully aware of proper protocol when dealing with sensitive credentials.