Have you been crypto-locked yet?

Crypto locker viruses are hitting businesses just like yours every day and are taking a serious toll. Data is being lost, ransoms are being paid and work is being delayed. We are seeing thousands of dollars of damage to businesses in our immediate line of sight.

With the new budget initiative of tax refunds for infrastructure under $20,000 for businesses with $2 million turnover or less it has become a busy time for my company. We are very busy replacing 2003 Small Business Servers with small Windows 20012 R2 Servers and Office 365 Email services. It is not quite a one-size-fits-all solution but it is great for lots of small companies to grab one before June 30 to get an instant tax back experience.

What I want to remind you all of this week is the rising threat of crypto locker viruses. Please start discussing this with your HR policies and other weekly topics for all staff to keep in mind. Also with your quick server upgrades, please ensure you invest in intraday backup and daily off site backup to ensure you have a recovery path when these nasties bite.

There is little doubt you will experience an attack this year, if you have not already, and you will know when it happens because your computers and business will be stopped in their tracks as your files become inaccessible. We are currently losing days of work every week to helping clients recover from these problems and have never before seen this level of impact to business from malicious code. The attacks are running well ahead of the preventions and the only real defence is staff training to not open suspicious looking emails and attachments. The only sane recovery path is your backup.

We are also seeing replicated files which people thought were backup. When your primary server locks away the data, the replicated server copies the encryption process. It is only a backup that is isolated by proper process with time stamped versions of the files that allows us to run the recovery.

If you are not certain that you have up to date operating systems and functioning backup with good offsite systems sending or taking your backups off site each day, place your orders before June 30 to take full advantage of the tax breaks offered. Remember, IT guys are getting busy so you need to hurry to get a quote out in time to place the order. There is a clear case to take action now.

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that is known for Business IT that makes sense. How can we help?