Encryption Ransomware

Is your company ready for any unanticipated circumstances?

Does your company have prevention measures in place to protect from cyber-attacks?

This company didn’t.

Company A was recently a victim of a Crypto-ransomware attack; where hackers encrypt data with a password that is generated at random and demand a ransom in exchange for the password to the data. In the event that this may happen, businesses have two options: pay the ransom, or recover their data from your back-up site if you are in a position to move past the threat of your data being publicized.

Company A turned to the latter option: restoring their files through their back-up system which looked somewhat like this structure:

As Company A were not one of our managed clients, we carried out the set-up process for their back-up system and handed the management of this sequential system over to them. A vital point to note is the fact that after the attack, Company A realized that they had not rotated their hard drives during the back-up process for the duration of a month. While this is not ideal for any back-up process, this did save the majority of their company’s data.

One thing to always remember is that hackers don’t immediately take action once they have surpassed a company’s firewalls. Rather, hackers now monitor your computer behaviour for longer periods of time before mobilizing their hack.

In this case, the hacker had identified that Company A’s server was being backed-up to one hard-drive and thus, gained access and encrypted that particular back-up hard-drive too. Due to this, Company A only lost a month’s worth of data as the hacker was not able to identify the other back-up hard drives.

How we can help you in such situations

As one of our managed clients, we would be able to offer you the following options to ensure that your data always remains secure:

1. Back-up your existing physical hard-drive system at an off-site location – Cloud Storage

2. Replace physical hard-drive system with Think Assured Site Agent – TASA – which accesses your data and shifts it to a secure off-site location all while remaining undetectable to any potential threats.

Contact Think I.T. to find out how we can help your company stay ahead of any situation.