Kiwi businesses and individuals have long held the belief that “she’ll be right” and “it won’t happen to me”.
Until you are not. Many incidences of cyber attacks, ransomware issues and “phishing” attacks have arisen over the past year.
As the world gets more connected and critical infrastructure and physical assets are managed by sensors and devices, the requirement to understand these cyber attacks and how they can affect businesses and individuals is becoming more urgent.
Some key security attacks are:
Ransomware = software that threatens to publish data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid.
Phishing = the fraudulent practice of sending emails imitating reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Spyware = aims to gather information about a person or organisation, sometimes without their knowledge, that may send such information to another entity without the consumer’s consent.
Information gathered can also be used on the dark web for fraudulent or illegal practices. So you may end up with a nuclear missile or some illicit drugs on your credit card bill!
Awareness of these types and other forms of attack could be the difference of going out of business, spending hours getting all your photos or data back from backups (if you have them) to carrying on with your day! Awareness of cyber risk is increasing, but so too are the number of threats and attempts individuals and businesses face.
Security isn’t just a technological thing, it is also people, culture and community education that can help. Good password practice, recognising fraudulent activity and emails and not plugging in random things to your network assists with cyber security.
Cyber Resilience
There is no silver bullet or blue pill you can take – we need to put you in the right
Here are some key items to create a pathway to Cyber resilience:
• Identify your most critical assets / data— What do you have that is most valuable to others?
• Gather intelligence oncyber threats—Who are the bad guys?
• Understand your digital profile—What does your online activity signal to others?
• Build a resilient system—What are the most critical elements of defence?
• Plan for a breach—What can you do now to prepare for a crisis?
For more information on how you can take these steps, be involved in the STAR program or see if your email address is on the Dark web, get in touch today and we can assist you in continuing to do what you do.
Making technology do what IT should, when IT should, by who IT should, and how IT should form, ground to cloud.
By Tony Snow, CEO, Stratus Blue, Humanising Technology – “I write for Bay Waka as it is a great way to inform the community about what they don’t know, they don’t know.”
