My favourite subject – NOT!

I touched on this back in #WeekendWisdom number 043, but just this week I’ve seen some posts from IT people and I was also on a webinar this week where there was an IT person that claimed they have cybersecurity skills and they all implied that if you get hit with ransomware that if you just paid the ransom you will be back in business. If you hear somebody say that to you, do not believe them because it is completely false! It is totally wrong! They are lying to you!

What is the reality in dealing with Ransomware?

First of all if you do manage to pay the ransom and get your data back, it will take a long time to recover your data, to decrypt all that stuff that’s been encrypted.

But you might not get your data back at all after paying it. They might not give you the key.

Even if you do get your data back some of it may be corrupted. Particularly if you have large databases.

But even still, if you get the data back, you still have to go through an exercise of sanitizing your complete infrastructure to make sure you remove all traces of the ransomware and any other infections they may have left behind. Any kind of back doors.

A lot of time and effort will be required to recover from a ransomware incident.

What should you do?

So if some IT service person says to you “Ah yeah. Pay the ransom. You’ll be grand” They’re lying. Walk away from them. They haven’t a clue what they’re talking about.

What you really need to have in place folks, is have a good backup strategy which is tested. Also have in place incident handling procedures, which you again need to test. Having them in place will help you recover from such an incident much more quickly and easily.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

How can L2 Cyber Security help you?

We offer a full range of training programmes, which can be delivered online or in-person*.

L2 Cyber Security are also a partner of CyberRiskAware for online self-directed Cyber Security Awareness training and Phishing testing.

Contact us for more information at info@L2CyberSecurity.com.

*With appropriate social distancing and other health and safety measures adhered to.

Follow us on Social media:

Liam is available on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Follow L2 Cyber on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

© L2 Cyber Security Solutions

The post #WeekendWisdom 078 Dealing with Ransomware appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

Earlier this week I was on a webinar that was hosted by ENISA, which is the EU Network and Information Security Agency. They had carried out a survey of small and medium enterprises all across Europe and they were presenting their findings.

What was the good?

Here is one of the more interesting slides which shows, quite pleasantly, that more than 70% of SMEs have in place things like backups and anti-virus and firewalls and a regular patching process. Which is really good for protecting businesses.

What wasn’t so good?

However much more concerning is that there is less than 30% had things in place such as a removable media management policy. This is about controlling USB sticks and external hard drives, which are really dangerous for data breaches.

Also there is no incident response plan. If you’ve seen some of my recent videos, you will know how important that is.

Finally there was no Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity Plan in place. These are really important for getting over situations where there is a fire or a flood or equipment failure or Ransomware attacks.

Anything else in this SME Cyber Security Survey?

One of the other things mentioned during this webinar, was that people considered cyber security expensive. Now if you went to one of the big consultancy firms they’re sure to charge you an arm and a leg. But there are lots of smaller, independent cyber security consultants out there. So please feel free to reach out and find out how reasonable our prices are.

So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

How can L2 Cyber Security help you?

We offer a full range of training programmes, which can be delivered online or in-person*.

L2 Cyber Security are also a partner of CyberRiskAware for online self-directed Cyber Security Awareness training and Phishing testing.

Contact us for more information at info@L2CyberSecurity.com.

*With appropriate social distancing and other health and safety measures adhered to.

Follow us on Social media:

Liam is available on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Follow L2 Cyber on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

© L2 Cyber Security Solutions

The post #WeekendWisdom 055 SME Cyber Security Survey appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..