The Russia situation has created a phenomenal rise in cyber-attacks globally. It is fair to assume that everybody is going to be attacked in one form or another. Your business may be a direct victim of an cyber-attack via your website, social media pages, server or apps. Or possibly a supplier or customer of your business can experience a cyber-attack; in which case your business will ultimately be affected as well.

Why would they attack somebody in the Caribbean?

While we may think that the war is occurring on the other side of the world, and we in the Caribbean would remain safe in our cocoon of sand, sea and sun, there are several factors which put our region at great risk. Due to the fact that we are major allies to the US/ Canada/ NATO, we naturally fall in the firing line.

Also, as oil producing countries, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname are high on the target list in that regard. Oil and gas based businesses in Europe are already falling victim to cyber-attacks. The risk is not simply limited to viruses that paralyze your systems, but ransomware is proving to be the main cyber-warfare tool being used by hackers, others include Denial of Service (DOS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks which affect key website and servers in organizations and government networks. Ransomware limits access to your data either for malicious or financial reasons. Also, the stealing of sensitive data is always a risk e.g. medical or credit card information.

How can Caribbean SMEs survive if they were attacked?

One solution is having a Ransomware task force which is a skilled and equipped cybersecurity response team that proactively and reactively protect your network and data by implementing tools, training and procedures in your organization. This specialized service is offered by DAB Global Technologies.

What does the response team do?

If you have already been hit, the team will use digital forensics and recovery methods to try and recover the lost/affected data. If the data is (unfortunately) unrecoverable, then new security controls will be put in place to prevent future breaches.

With ransomware, according to the severity of the attack, your business can be in real trouble. Prevention is definitely better than any cure. Simply put, having reliable and effective backup and restore program is key to preventing and reducing the impact of a ransomware attack.

There are some ransomware attacks where recovery of data is not possible unless you have the encryption key. If the attack is not too severe, you may be able to restore from back up, however skilled hackers consider it a challenge to test how strong your defenses are. To ensure that you don’t end up in this vulnerable position, you ought to have a reliable back up – and your back up must work.