5 reasons to Fix Cyber

1. Stay productive – keep running your business

2. Making sure your devices are not used to attack others (part of good neighbor policy)

3. Compliant with regulations (keep government in check)

4. Emergency device failure would be taken care of

5. Stay out of news

The idea is to give 5 positive reasons to stay out of the limelight (instead of focusing on the myriad of ransomware attacks in the last few weeks.

Colonial pipeline – bad password management – did not have network segmentation. If you have important devices to protect they better have additional safeguards in case your office computers get hacked.

The JBS Foods story about ransomware in their systems supposedly did not shut down their operation completely but there was a possibility of it (more details to come here).

 

Remember for every news story on a large attack, there are likely hundreds of other ransomware attacks. As the attackers have hundreds of millions in their warchest always looking to make more money. as above the website lists a few of the ransomware attacks on the Daily Swig.

It is better to focus on your own systems, compliance methods, procedures, and other reasons.

Let’s face it a verified backup off site is a tough hurdle to jump for the first time. Once it is taken care of, then it is easier to take care of it.

I want to reiterate that if you have a  backup on your computer or a server then that will be useful only if a standard IT issue arises (data problems. deletions or hardware failure) but if ransomware comes into the system the ransomware will encrypt the backup as well. this is why the backup needs to be in the format of “Disaster Recovery”.

 

I.e. what would happen in a fire? If your computer went up in flames then you have to recover somehow, in this case to recover you need the data and procedures to recover offsite.

 

There are ways to set up offsite automated backups which are not easily accessed, because if it is easy to access for you then the ransomware could access as well.

I.e. if the ‘cloud’ is an easy to use drive X: on your computer then ransomware can access and encrypt as well.

 

There are a lot of things to think about when designing a ‘good’ backup program, but it can be done.

It’s time to do it now – in this world of Ransomware news!!