RANSOMWARE ATTACKS ARE ON THE RISE
Nine bicycle shop owners or managers were interviewed in a recent issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. The topic was how they protect their inventory and information. It was interesting for me to read these nine perspectives on security. I was especially intrigued by one of the respondents saying that anyone stealing from them would have some bad karma coming their way.
You may recall that I’ve written a number of articles for The Micromobility Reporter addressing security, most protecting information and data. Those articles discussed different ways to secure and protect systems and data to help ward off hacks and ransomware attacks. Admittedly, I overlooked the karma defense.
Data is critical to the operations of nearly every business. When data is corrupted or lost, the impact on business can be devastating. Data loss can be the result of a hack, ransomware attack, system failure, natural disaster or other causes. Because a data loss can be so devastating, your business should be working with your IT advisors to proactively protect your data and ensure speedy resumption of operations.
Ransomware as a cause of data loss is particularly concerning. The constant threat of new and creative attacks makes being breached more likely all the time. The encryption of your business’s data if you become a victim of ransomware could become a defining moment. Some businesses will survive mostly intact, but others will succumb and be crippled. Many times it’s the businesses that continue to rely on legacy processes that have the greatest difficulty recovering because of the amount of work and resources needed to identify what data was compromised, and how to recover. This can take days or weeks, and the business has to work around the missing and/or corrupted data.
According to Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research, ransomware preparedness is the most important business priority for 26 percent of survey respondents, and is among the top five business priorities for another 53 percent. Where does ransomware protection rank in your business?
Ransomware attacks are never-ending. According to ESG’s research, 79 percent of businesses have experienced at least one attempted ransomware attack (successful or not) within the past year. Ransomware attacks happen in the cyber world, though the impacts can potentially extend across all facets of your business, especially data protection.
Regardless, companies must recognize one important fact about ransomware: ransomware payments do not guarantee full data recovery. ESG research shows that 87% of companies that have been victimized by a ransomware attack in the last year failed to recover all their data after paying a ransom. In addition, the possibility also exists that some malware may still reside in your systems that will initiate another attack in the future.
Ransomware puts a tremendous amount of pressure on your business. It is something that requires constant vigilance because once the ransom demand is made, it’s too late to try and fix the problem. Make sure you’re talking to and working with your IT professional now.
Above I mentioned I’ve written articles that covered data protection, data storage, hacking and ransomware. If you haven’t read them I would like to encourage you to do so. If you didn’t save the articles, contact Human Powered Solutions for copies or check the articles archives at humanpoweredsolutions.com.
Hoping you don’t get attacked is not the best strategy.
Contact Steve Bina at steve@humanpoweredsolutions.com