My son gave me this info as his company has been hacked along with many other American businesses. Their goal is to hold ransom the technology in the hard drives of the companies + sell your own info back Anyone else heard of this?; same old kidnap/ransom affair by a new group of crooks. Seems that they have hit corporate America quite heavily. My son has almost cleared it out for his company, but it involved 2 days when his 49 employees should have been working.

Same old ransom ware that has been going around for years.

I've (my company) has been held ransom twice.

Keep your backup hard drives up daily/every night. Catch the signs early then shut down system. Scrub the existing hard drive completely, then run the backup server hard drive back in. The only data you will lose is for how long it takes you to shut down from activation.

The first time was painful, the second time we were up and running in 2 hours. We had insurance that time but before they could even do anything my IT guy had us back up and running.

Insurance against this was really cheap for several years, but 2 years ago it went through the roof. That shows how often the insurance had to respond. It's a very big problem and no one can completely defeat or keep it from happening to themselves.

I have a different, simpler situation. Our design computers are just not internet-connected. We do email and research on cheap laptops that we wouldn't miss if something happened to them, and keep records offline. Designs are moved by sneakernet on thumb drives with write-protect switches. Our serious stuff is backed up on three separate drives that are not all updated at once. A hard right to the chin will hit nothing but hair...

Having said that, as I've told others at secure facilities, there is always a way in. The more secure the system becomes, the more complacent its keepers become...

You can't keep a crook, or thief out if they really want in.

George

quote:

Originally posted by georgeld:
You can't keep a crook, or thief out if they really want in.

George

Sometimes, best you can do is make it not worth the effort. Thievery at its root is a business, with revenues and costs.