The risk of ransomware attack for small business
We’ve had first hand experience of the risk of ransomware for small business this year. A couple of weeks into lockdown, back in late March, one of our customers rang us to ask for help with an urgent problem.
Like many businesses at that time, they’d shut their office and were all working from home. That Monday morning, they all tried to log on as normal and found there were no systems at the other end.
No email.
No accounts system.
No documents or spreadsheets.
All gone.
When one of their team was tasked with investigating on site, they found the dreaded ransomware message on every screen in the building.
Worse still, their main server had been attacked and encrypted too. Even the backups for that server had been encrypted and were unusable – and because no-one had been in to rotate backup drives, they had no recent backup either.
Several weeks of disruption followed for them while they got to grips with the situation and what they needed to do to get back up and running.
If this happened to you, you’d need it like a hole in the head right? Right in the middle of the pandemic, when they were struggling already, this came along to add to their worries.
They had a happy ending of sorts – they had business continuity insurance in place who were able to deploy a specialist ransomware team to assist. The variant of ransomware that had been installed was a particularly nasty one, and it wasn’t possible to decrypt. And with no backups available, there wasn’t really any other choice than for the insurance company to pay the ransom being asked. So in the end they were able to get back to normal operation – but not without a lot of lessons to learn and steps to put in place to try and make sure something like this didn’t happen again.
So how do you prevent an attack like this? The short answer is that you can’t remove the risk of ransomware for small business completely.
Businesses large and small across the planet have been similarly affected by data breaches and cyber-attacks, and there have been some very high profile cases of large organisations, local government establishments and hospitals being affected.
And if big business can’t protect itself, despite all the resources and funding they have at their disposal, what hope is there for small business?
In these troubled times, bad actors are taking advantage of the uncertainty caused by COVID-19 to spread malware. From initial desktop or mobile interactions, hackers can launch numerous attacks meant to compromise business operations, each one of them causing serious disruption.
And as our customer found this year, small businesses shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that they are of minor importance to cyber criminals.
Small businesses may have the impression that they are immune to the risk of ransomware attack because they are low profile as compared to large organizations. The reality is that they actually represent ideal targets.
More than half of hacking attacks target small businesses, but business owners enjoy a false sense of security thinking that their companies are insignificant and won’t ever attract the attention of hackers.
Despite the perception in the movies that hackers are a glamorous elite few the current reality is that powerful hacking tools are available to anyone these days.
The following combination of factors makes small business particularly vulnerable and easy targets.
- Small businesses have sensitive data – hackers will look for customer information, employee data, trade secrets, inventory information, and industry-specific data
- Small businesses typically don’t make a significant investment in cybersecurity
- Small businesses for various reasons don’t always comply to regulations around data protection and privacy
So what can you do to avoid being attacked in the first place, and what is the best way to handle it if you are?
Our customer was lucky – it’s not typically a good idea to pay the ransom because there is no guarantee that you’ll receive the data back. But in this instance there really wasn’t any other choice for them – they came perilously close to losing everything.
So, make sure you have business interruption insurance in place and that it includes cover and assistance in the event of an attack.
You may think that your own IT company should be able to help with something like this, but the reality is that there is only so much typical IT support can do once an attack has happened – you really need the resources of a specialist team who have the experience and the knowledge to handle the problem.
As regards prevention though there are a number of things your IT support can and must do to reduce your risk
- Absolutely fundamental is that you always have multiple viable backups, and that at least one of these are stored offline out of the hackers reach. Cloud backups can help up to a point as long as there are mechanisms in place to detect and prevent attempts to encrypt them too.
- Implement strong technological defenses – Hackers are developing incredibly sophisticated malware, which is why it’s necessary to have strong technological defenses in place. Technology has advanced in terms of detection and protection tools. Make sure you can identify attacks early on through web application firewalls, IPS, and other solutions.
- Update hardware and software – Don’t rely too much on hardware or software that is outdated. At one point or another, cyber thieves will discover your vulnerabilities. Don’t use decade-old machines and don’t forget to update the software every now and then. A hacking attack can spread rapidly
The best way to minimise the risk of ransomware attack is prevention. This can’t be overstated enough. Managed security packages and monitoring solutions can prevent threats and compromised user credentials, so you can stop an attack before it even happens.
(thanks to http://www.smallbizviewpoints.com/2020/07/26/why-are-small-businesses-at-increased-risk-of-ransomware-attacks for some of the content in this article)
Need any help?
I hope this article on the risk of ransomware attack for small business is useful. If you’d like to discuss any points raised, we’d love to hear – leave a comment below.
Or, if you’re struggling to find IT support that works the way you need it to, we’re happy to help with some free advice. Give us a call on 01992 466877 or contact us
