While it will be most likely to find cyberattacks between Russia and Ukraine, it may be that attacks will stretch to other countries as well, including the United States. These attacks are not only related to the act of war. Even in non-war periods of time, cyber war seems to be on the increase.
Please know that we follow events like this from a cyber security standpoint closely. We are already getting communication from our vendors concerning their knowledge of these issues and the actions that they are taking to help mitigate threats.
In many regards, the present situation is all the more reason to do what we already strive to do day by day. On the other hand, it might be timely to take our security to the next level.
Two common long-distance attacks are:
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) or Denial of Service (DoS) attacks
These attacks most often cause an inability to access network-based resources due an inundation of the network with unwanted traffic in order to cause a slowdown of the network.
Ransomware
This is the encrypting of a business’ data such that the business cannot use their own data. Spreadsheets, pictures, pdf documents, word documents, and other files can be made useless unless the ransom is paid or the files restored from backup. Even backup files can be attacked by ransomware, hence our interest in security in general, and not only backups. Once a successful ransomware attack occurs, a business’ network can be infected with malware which can be difficult and time consuming to eliminate.
Either of these can be used to attack your business or attack your software vendor. Obviously, if your software vendor fell to an attack, your data would be just as much at risk. Due to the type of threat, it may be wise to remember the cloud-based tools that you use, and the impact to you if they are off-line or are damaged.
It is often possible to set up and schedule backups of cloud data so that an attack on a cloud provider and/or your data can be mitigated. Email is an example of just one of many types of cloud services many use. Even though you may access your email account (Inbox, Sent Mail, Contacts, Calendar, etc.) via your computer, since this data is often primarily housed in the cloud, a loss of the email server can keep you from accessing your data. A restore of your computer from backup can still leave access to email and related information impossible. Cloud software providers often have a shared responsibility policy regarding your data. This means that while they will take reasonable precautions, they state that they are not liable for the loss of data. If this data is important to you and your business, it is important to back it up. We have backup solutions for a number of these cloud services providing an independent backup copy of this cloud data allowing businesses to better weather a storm like this. Please let us know if you would like more information.
If you would like to review your current protection, please contact us. Even if these Ukraine issues are resolved quickly and peaceably, these are valid deliberations that should be considered at all times.
