We’re seeing more and more phishing scams hitting homes and businesses every day. These scams are becoming increasingly convincing, with the latest Gmail scam even emulating the writing style of your contacts to fool you.
If you value your personal or business data – from family photos to highly sensitive commercial material – cyber security should be TOP of your priority list!
From a business perspective – if you lost every document you had ever stored, would you be able to keep working? Ransomware preys on the fact that the answer is no, and that you’ll pay whatever it takes to get your unencrypted files back. And even when you pay, you’re not guaranteed to get them back in full.
Now think about home. Every family photo, every home movie, every bill you’ve ever saved on your computer is at risk.
How to Safeguard Your Home or Business
1. PROTECT The first step is making sure you have adequate protection in place, so that even if you do fall prey to these convincing scams, the attack is prevented before it can do damage. We have seen Sophos Intercept X ransomware protection detect and stop potential threats in their tracks. See the review here.
2. BACKUP Along with invasion prevention, it’s vital to have cloud and/or hard-copy backups of all of your data. For home and small business, you can get 3TB hard drives at stores like JB HIFi or Officeworks, which have plenty of room to store years of files. If you’re a large business, we highly recommend speaking to your IT provider about how they are protecting you in the event of a phishing scam or ransomware attack.
3. EDUCATE The next stage is education. If you run a business, how often do you educate your staff on cybersecurity? Do you talk to your kids about the potential damage that can be done from opening an email link from a scammer? If one of these seemingly innocent emails can bring down a multi-national company – imagine what it could do to your files!
NEXT STEP
Want an expert to check your IT? MSS are Perth’s cybersecurity leaders, with a team of highly trained professionals specialising in protecting your business.
– Read the free whitepaper on Ransomware
– Read more about Sophos Intercept X
– Download your free Anti-Ransomware kit
