By Ken Rode, Director of IT Services, UNAPEN Inc., and a member of  ASCII since 2014

This month, the SANS OUCH! newsletter focuses on the recent WannaCry ransomware and how you can protect yourself from similar attacks.

Personally, it amazes me that attacks like this are even still an issue for any reputable company as the protections to prevent them are reasonably affordable and are essentially a baseline of security that any firm should have.

Let's Cover the Basics

1.)    Keep your systems up to date – These attacks are exploiting a hole that was patched in March.  With all the tools and services available to ensure your systems are patched, it is negligent to not have applied this update by now.  Through ITComplete™, UNAPEN can even resolve the issue for operating systems that Microsoft no longer supports.

2.)    The attack has known signatures - so using a reputable, fully featured malware protection package should help block infections.  The key is to ensure these protections are on, operating properly and reporting to the correct people if an issue is discovered.  Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security is incorporated into UNAPEN ITComplete™ and has the protections needed.

3.)    Finally, the goal of ransomware is to collect ransom - even if an attack got through the first two protections (as WannaCry would not) you only need to pay ransom if you can’t recover on your own.  Active Business Continuity Systems like ITComplete DataSafe™ allow clients to spin up a clean copy of a protected system in minutes to recover from a hardware, software, or even malware issue.

Enjoy!

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