Security Newsletter
It’s a new year and time for new resolutions! Whether you have a cliché, traditional resolution like deciding to cut out caffeine or something totally original like trying a new food each month, think of one that can not only improve your own life, but also the lives of everyone around you. We encourage you to come up with a work resolution in addition to your personal one!
One suggestion we have is to become informed and proactive about preventing ransomware attacks. Imagine this: You are working for what feels like months on a project. You are almost 90% done when you try to log on to your computer and you see a ransomware message. It’s one that commands you to pay $10,000 to get back onto your computer. Uh-oh! You did not back up your project! Now you are stuck, without all your hard work, and the deadline is approaching. Unfortunately, the situation occurred because one of your co-workers opened a malicious email. This is called “phishing” and it happens every day to people all over the world. This year, try to make your work-related resolution to get informed and help prevent your companies from being impacted by these types of attacks.
These three steps are common ways to prevent a ransomware attack, even if you don’t have much technical knowledge:
- Back up. In a perfect world, employees would back up their data once a day, but since this is not feasible in a lot of workspaces, try to back up your data once a week, or even once a month. Any backups are better than no backups.
- Avoid clicking on suspicious emails and links. Phishing attacks are one of the most common because it is easy to do, and they prey on the unaware user.
- Infected with malware already? Disconnect. This will prevent the malware from spreading. Also disconnect the WiFi and Bluetooth, as these can also spread malware.
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