Nexia Melbourne recently found itself in a position where it needed to act quickly as a cyber attacker had allegedly hacked into the company’s server and had claimed that files had been accessed and would be downloaded unless a significant ransom was paid.
Fortunately, the position was quickly rectified by the business with Nexia’s IT Department and its external IT partner ensuring a robust IT infrastructure with appropriate business policies and processes was in place to be able to swiftly deal with these types of threats. Over the past few years, the firm has made major improvements to the IT infrastructure enabling it to defend such attacks.
“From a business and client perspective, all the appropriate IT protocols were in place and the firewalls and anti-virus protection mechanisms were activated to immediately deal with this sort of business threat & protect all stakeholder files and privacy,” said the Managing Partner, Paul Dal Bosco.
Most clients might not be aware that Ransomware is the number one malware attack affecting organisations today. It encrypts the files and holds them hostage until a ransom is paid, potentially causing massive disruption to your business.
Attacks have been increasing steadily over recent years and can be triggered by opening a genuine-looking email, or a download from a website. The different types of Ransomware then lock the data and demand exorbitant payments for the promise of its release.
In 99% of cases the encryption cannot be broken, so the user or the business must either rely on their backup to restore data or attempt to pay the ransom. The problem with the latter option is that there is no guarantee that the victims will get their data back, or that the attacker will not leave other forms of malware running on the system. What is almost certain is that if the ransom is paid, the business is marked down as a future target.
In Nexia Melbourne’s case, on Tuesday, 3rd November 2020 the company experienced a cyber incident which was immediately acted upon and subsequently contained. The matter was swiftly dealt with by Nexia’s IT providers and the company advised that there was no evidence of any movement of data or files. As part of the process, strict protocols were followed, passwords were immediately changed, latest security upgrades were applied to servers, and firewalls were geo locked.
In commenting further on the cyber-attack, Angelo LoCastro, Nexia Melbourne ICT Manager said,
“Nexia’s best option against Ransomware was to have the appropriate protection in place where our software and anti-virus prevents the malicious spontaneous encryption of data by Ransomware. Once the Ransomware is intercepted, the systems in place enable a position where it reverts the files back to their safe states.”
Managing Partner, Paul Dal Bosco at Nexia Melbourne said,
“This type of threat is certainly a business-critical danger, which can be triggered quite innocently in any organisation. What you need to ensure is that you have the capacity and appropriate protections in place to prevent something like this escalating and causing significant harm to your business. Confidentiality of our data is paramount. In our case, the Nexia Melbourne IT Department and external IT providers were able to swiftly and immediately deal with all the issues to ensure the protection of our business and maintain the security and confidentiality of our important client and business information.”
For more information, please contact Nexia Melbourne.
