The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 32: Aug/Sept 2017 | Page 29

TECHNOLOGY REVVED UP How do you prevent yourself from being another ransomware statistic? By Richard Marsh, CEO of CIS Hear the word GoldenEye and you’d be forgiven for thinking of Piers Brosnan at his best. 007 racing to Russia in search of stolen access codes for a devastating electromagnetic space weapon. Fast forward 20 years and the action has moved online, morphing into a game of cat and mouse between hackers and cybersecurity experts attempting to prevent the breach of corporate networks by hackers. Today, Ransomware is big business and a thorn in the side to organisations of all shapes and sizes. Indeed, not a day goes by without mention of further IT problems in the press. Yet, for all the column inches and WannaCry – the first large-scale attack being seen as a global wake-up call and warning to the world on ransomware – many businesses just seem to have ignored it and plodded on regardless. With experts still putting the figure for ‘unpatched’ IT systems at somewhere over the 40m mark, even after Microsoft released updates to protect outdated computers still running Windows XP, ignoring the issue is a mistake. The last thing you want to be doing is needlessly paying a ransom that could so easily have been prevented. So what can you do? Firstly, all machines must be fully patched and up- to-date with the latest Windows security updates. Secondly, you must have an appropriate level of anti-virus software in place. Perhaps most important though is having a disaster recovery strategy – something many SMEs often overlook and come to quickly regret. Of course, when running a business there’s often little time to manage IT systems and with the best will in the world it’s not something most SMEs feel comfortable taking care of on their own or even have the resources to manage in-house. That’s why it makes sense to take expert advice on deployment of cybersecurity solutions and disaster recovery planning. After all, do you really know what you need and whether to go for a private cloud based in a Tier 3 UK data centre? And have you factored the GDPR in your thinking? If you are unsure on any of the above then you should consider getting help. Here the old adage still holds true: prevention is better than cure. Richard Marsh, CEO, CIS. Email: [email protected] CIS can provide you with a Security Assessment and take corrective action to increase your security, helping prevent ransomware taking hold of your business. Call us on 01367 700555 for more information, or visit our website: www.cisltd.com/ransomware THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017 29