Imagine coming in next Monday bright and early, ready to get the week started. You get your coffee, sit down at your computer, and start opening your reports and other files. You find there’s this odd extension on all the file names and nothing seems to open right. A few hours later, you get a notice that your entire database – and thus, your business – is being held for ransom.
What is Ransomware?
Ransomware typically propagates as a Trojan virus, usually attached to a file from the internet that’s then downloaded onto a desktop. The problem happens in companies is when that computer is connected to the network, allowing the virus to quickly spread and hold-hostage all the files and data on the servers. Manufacturers and Distributors are especially vulnerable as their ERP software is run off of data on the servers, causing the entire business to grind to a halt when that data is inaccessible.
How vulnerable is your Manufacturing or Distribution business to Ransomware?
When we think of disasters we think of nature’s worst: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires. But Ransomware is a real problem that is more likely to hit a company than any natural disaster, in fact Ransomware is increasing over a 150% each year since 2014, with an estimated $325 million in damages worldwide in 2015 alone. 88% of IT professionals are concerned about Ransomware. In a one month study, 68,000 computers were infected with Ransomware – that’s 5,700 computers per day!
When a business is hit by Ransomware it can take days before a company can pay the ransom and get the data back. During that time your business has raw goods coming in, orders that need to be shipped out, payments that need to be processed, even payroll, but everything has to wait until your data is recovered and re-installed. Thousands of dollars could be lost in those few days, not to mention hours of time.
And the good news is that protections can be just a few hundred dollars a month, and give you peace of mind against the bad guys.
When Ransomware hits, we have your back
Though there’s no sure-way to defeat Ransomeware, you can play defense by having business continuity and disaster recover (BCDR), install and keep all antivirus security software up to date, and NEVER open suspicious files from the internet or email.
We offer a disaster recovery program, which creates a replica of your server infrastructure and then takes a snapshot of your system data and stores it in a secure cloud environment. Your system stays dormant in our secure data center until you need it. In the event of a Ransomware attack, we can have you up and running with the most recent copy of your system, minimizing data loss and helping you get your day to day functions back online and productive in a quick time frame.
We provide our clients with a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours. That means that if your systems go down for whatever reason, our disaster recovery system will have you back up and running in the cloud within 4 hours. Are you ready to protect your business?
