Ransomware – it happens

I recently attended a meeting & learned about a Ransomware attack that resulted in the business being down for one week.   This is a local Chicago area business & they opted to pay the ransom.  It’s so close to home it’s worth sharing!   They didn’t go into too many details on the surrounding the terms and payment amount.  The good news was that they had a cybersecurity insurance policy to cover such disasters.

Best practices are to file a police report, as this is a crime.  I imagine it could be a felony depending on the total dollar amount.   I recently shared the Datto 2016 Ransomware Report and the FBI has reported that 1 in 4 attacks don’t get reported.   I feel it’s important to file that police report, so it’s at least documented.

Keep all patches and service packs up to date on your servers, work stations, etc.

Some things to remember:

• Maintain a firewall between the router and your network.
  • MDTS recommends FortiGate.
• A good antivirus and Malware protection.
  • MDTS recommends Trend Micro and Malwarebytes.
• Then finally having a robust backup and recovery tool.    Malware can sit dormant for 6 months or more, so it’s imperative to keep a 372- day retention on backup data.  Possibly maintain a yearend backup and month-end backups.
  • MDTS highly recommends datto for backup and recovery.
• Perhaps it’s not a bad idea to consider Cybersecurity Policy.

Remember that if this can happen to them, it can happen to your business.  You may visit our website at: www.mdtsllc.com  for see the full range of services we can provide!   For additional information please email: info@mdtsllc.com or call 773 482 2005.