There is some justice, though you don’t often hear about it. An American (yes, he has a Russian connection) was sentenced to four years’ jail for ransomware attacks in Canada.
Meantime, criminals who breached The Big Issue (the newspaper sold by homeless folk), recently leaked 550GB of data including passports of staff members.
Has your company taken any steps to protect itself? Because there are measures you can take…
- Enhance network monitoring capabilities (are you using the latest security software?)
- Check your disaster recovery procedures. Please do this. Worst case scenario; you’ll need to recover data quickly.
- Educate management AND staff about cybersecurity, cyber risks and best practices.
- Fully implement multi-factor authentication. It’s a pain, but it’s necessary.
- Migrate away from legacy systems. They’re hard to maintain and restore.
- Prepare! Do you have an incident response plan?
It’s not IF you’re a target, it’s WHEN. 66% of companies got a ransomware attack last year (U.S. data). In Western Australia? Call us before you get hit – on 9325 1196 – or talk to your existing IT security partners. And if you’re the sort of person that reads the instructions, here’s a useful remediation guide.