While we would always to advice you have a plan in place before you fall victim to a ransomware attack, if the worst happens and you don’t have a strategy it’s important you try not to panic. This may take some time, and even cost some money, but if you value your data and your company’s reputation, you’ll do it.
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After the incident is over, you’ll need to perform a total security audit and update all systems. It’s important your customers hear the bad news from your company, not a media report.
Once you’ve had a bit more time to establish exactly what went wrong, that’s when you need to inform them. Obviously, there’s no point putting out a statement the minute you discover the breach as at this point you won’t know all of the facts surrounding the attack. It’s also important your upfront with your customers who might have had their data compromised in a ransomware attack. You should also let them know of any expected system downtime which will impact their work. Rather than pointing fingers, inform your staff that there has been a breach, what this means and what action you plan on taking. When it comes to cyber-attacks, your weakest link is often your employees and despite our best efforts, we can all easily make mistakes that can jeopardise company data. Transparency is key in situations like this. If the data stored has numerous identifiers, you should alert a data protection officer or equivalent. Failure to do means your organisation is non-compliant with legislation and with potential fines of 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million, that’s something you cannot afford to do – literally!
If your company handles data that belongs to citizens inside the European Union, GDPR now requires you to inform the ICO within 72 hours of a breach having occurred.
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Often cyberattacks leave clues in the metadata, so a full search of that will be necessary in most cases. This should help for future attacks and help you learn about your current security systems. It’s also helpful to map out a timeline of the breach. In that instance, it’s important that the CIO is fully briefed on all security issues and can take the reins in the event of a crisis. However, for some smaller companies, budgetary restraints often mean having these experts in-house just isn’t feasible. It’s not uncommon for bigger organisations to have an IT security team and even a dedicated Chief Information Security Officer who will be the one to execute your plan of action and handle protocol in the aftermath of an attack. It’s important to let everyone know exactly what is expected of them. In the instance that a plan doesn’t exist, a meeting should be held to outline what needs to happen next.
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If you’re lucky, the malware will only affect the machine it was opened on however, if you’ve failed to patch your entire network (hello WannaCry) your entire system will end up becoming infected.įirst you need to locate the machine that was initially infected and find out if they’ve opened any suspicious emails or noticed any irregular activity on their machine. The most common way ransomware makes it into your system is through a malicious link or email attachment. What should you do in the event of an attack? Trace the attack Attacking a business might see them do the most damage but regular end-users who aren’t necessarily clued-up on cybersecurity are more likely to pay the ransom in an attempt to retrieve their files.Īs a result, cybercriminals launching this type of attack usually take a scattergun approach, as even if only a small minority of the victims pay out, ransomware is so cheap to deploy the attackers are guaranteed a profit.įalling foul of a ransomware attack can be damaging enough however, if you handle the aftermath badly the reputational damage could be catastrophic causing you to lose much more than just your files. Unfortunately, ransomware attackers aren’t fussy when it comes to who they target. By comparison, locker- ransomware simply locks users out of their devices. Once a malicious link has been clicked on or a misleading application has been opened, crypto-ransomware will encrypt all the files, folders and hard drives on the infected device, promising to reinstate once a ransom has been paid to the attacker. There are two major types of ransomware crypto and locker.
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