Are you safe from the latest threat?
May 2017, will go down in the books as one of the worst weekends in cyber attack history.
Hitting over 100 countries including government offices, hospitals, and large international organizations such as FedEx, the WannaCry ransomware locked down systems throughout Russia, China, and the U.K. demanding that administrators pay ransom in order to regain access. And to make matters worse, the fees go up every few hours if you don’t pay.
Reportedly, the threat was inadvertently stopped; however, the cybercriminals could make a slight modification to the ransomware and it could erupt again without warning. If you have updated your software with Microsoft’s latest patch, you are protected from this ransomware. If you haven’t updated with the latest patch, you can go here to see how to set-up automatic updates.
In March 2017, Microsoft became aware of the WannaCry ransomware threat and released a patch to protect everyone from possible infiltration. Understanding the massive implications of the WannaCry ransomware, Microsoft also released patches for older systems including Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003. For those who ignored the warning, your computer could still be at risk. We advise that you update your systems now. If your computers haven’t been hit, you will be able to stop the infiltration before it spreads.
The major cyber attack that occurred on a Friday was a good reference on the importance of updating computers. WannaCry takes advantage of a security issue in the MS Windows OS. We took every precaution with our security clients to protect them from this potentially devastating attack. For more information on how you should be protecting your systems, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.
Source, CNN: https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/13/technology/ransomware-attack-nsa-microsoft/index.html
