Hello,
Yes, the chances are not in your favor of a ransomware attack. Many think the bad guys go after big banks and fortune 500 corporations. Those entities, however, are a waste of time. Entities such as General Motors, Bank of American, Wells Fargo,etc. have huge IT budges and entire teams of people whose sole job is security.
The majority of small businesses, such as those of you on this forum, are a different story.
* Many do not have the IT budget for hard security.
* Many do not care about security because many do not care about IT. To this day, the number one reason I lose a client is because they tell me things like "we haven't had any problems in 15 years, why should we prepare for something that has never happened?"
* To this day, the majority of new clients I have signed up for the past 5 years do NOT have any type of disaster recovery process in place. No backups. And convincing them to do so was like pulling teeth.
* Many are still running Windows 10 and other end-of-life software. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Not good enough.
* Completely incompetent IT. There are a lot of IT guys out there that are just morons or older guys riding out the last few years until retirement.
The list goes on and on. The bad guys figured this all out long ago. It's better to make a little money from hundreds of entitles just like you than to try to make a lot of money from a one time hack.
What to do to prepare:
* Move to Office 365. Set up MFA. Lock down email. Email to this day is still the number one way the bad guys get in. I still have clients that use free AOL accounts, and they think that is good enough. It's not.
* Use a good antivirus such as Sophos. Something that can lock down a computer if a threat is detected.
* Disaster recovery. On and offsite backups are a most. Backups should be tested yearly. If you have never restored your backups, you have no idea if they work or not.
* Stop running end-of-life software. No more Windows Server 2012. No more Windows 10. No more. I am well aware that some of you have some old program that will not run on anything past Windows 7. You love your little program. You've had it for 15 years. But the company that made it went belly up in 2015. It's time to move on. Some of you would still be running Windows XP if you could.
That list is not the end-all-be-all but it is a good start.
James
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