EDUCATION CONNECTION
RANSOMWARE AND CYBERATTACKS:
Get Your Business Out of the Crosshairs By Sarah Peiper & Bill Moore If you’ve been keeping up in the news lately, you may have
that encrypts the victim’s data or prevents access to IT
noticed an alarming trend in cyberattacks. Malicious groups
infrastructure. Victims receive a decryption key after
that used to target large corporations like Target, Experian,
paying a ransom, which restores access to impacted data.
Blue Cross Blue Shield, Honda and others are now turning
Unfortunately, once a victim is infected with ransomware, it’s
their focus to small businesses. In early July, hackers targeted
often impossible to restore access without a decryption key
hundreds of businesses around the world who had one thing
unless there is an error in the malware code. There were more
in common: They were all connected to a remote management
than 65,000 successful ransomware attacks last year, and there
software tool called VSA. Requesting over $70 million in
is a new attack every eight minutes, making ransomware a real
bitcoin in exchange for a decryption tool, hackers brought
problem for companies of every size in every sector.
networks of over 1,000 businesses — restaurants, dentist offices, small accounting firms — to their knees. And in case you’re not convinced it could happen to you, in late June, McDermott Top Shop, a fabricator in Wisconsin, was the target of such an attack. It crept in through their IT support network and crippled most of their operating systems. It was able to lock up their servers and get to all of their onsite backups. They couldn’t fabricate for a week. Eventually they were able to restore their systems using offsite backups, but it didn’t happen overnight and not without a lot of stress, lawyers and cyber insurance coverage. We caught up with Bill Moore, an expert in information technology, for a look at what’s happening and how you can protect your business from ransomware and cyberattacks. C&AS: What is ransomware
and how does it affect systems? Bill: Ransomware is a specific type of malware
C&AS: What are the impacts of an attack? Bill: While ransomware isn’t a new phenomenon — the first ransomware attack took place in 1989 — the cost and consequences of an attack have increased considerably, especially in the past several years. In 2018, the average ransom payment was just $7,000. The next year it reached $41,000. Today, companies can expect to pay at least $200,000 to restore critical systems, and, as a veteran ransom negotiator recently explained, “The numbers in 2020 were really bad, but, at the end of 2020, everyone looked around and said, 2021 is going to be even worse.” To be sure, the FBI and many cybersecurity professionals discourage companies from paying a ransom, noting that it essentially serves as venture capital for threat actors, and it incentivizes continued bad behavior. However, rebuilding IT infrastructure from scratch can be even more expensive, putting victims in an impossible situation. International Surface Fabricators Association • Vol. 14 / Issue 3 • 19
