Targeted Cyber-criminal Activity
Cybercriminals are going to try and get the most money for the least amount of effort. Understanding that businesses are more likely to secure servers and that endpoints are both ubiquitous, as well as generally undefended, such devices have become prime targets for cybercrime.
Cybercriminals will find areas that aren’t properly defended so that they can ransom bitcoin out of their victims. Remember WannaCry in 2017? This was a North Korean attack, a fact that has recently been revealed to the public. On its heels came NotPetya, which targeted Ukraine, but similar to WannaCry spread through businesses in multiple countries. (This attack is also known by the name “GoldenEye”.) While NotPetya wasn’t quite so pernicious as WannaCry, it still used the same basic tactic: vulnerabilities were exploited to usher in encryption software that locked users out of data access unless they paid a ransom.
Backup Solutions Neutralize Ransomware Attacks
The crazy thing is that paying such ransoms isn’t really necessary if you’ve got the right kind of backup solutions in place. You can automatically backup all your files every 15 minutes. Only the initial backup takes time; after that, daily work is preserved in a “trickle-up” kind of way.
It would behoove your operation to acquire backup solutions for such situations to help you avoid being undermined. Protections must be comprehensive. You shouldn’t only backup your servers— you’ve got to have backup solutions for endpoint devices as well.
