Source: Article by Kevin Collier – CNN
Before we deep dive into this article let us explain what exactly is Ransomware. Little snippet from wiki below: –
“Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim’s data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid. In a properly implemented cryptoviral extortion attack, recovering the files without the decryption key is an intractable problem – and difficult to trace digital currencies such as Ukash or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency are used for the ransoms, making tracing and prosecuting the perpetrators difficult. “
Dental offices are being targeted by Ransomware and are crippled by it. One of administrative had this to say:-
“We have no access to the patient charts, schedule, x-rays, or payment ledger,” Shae Johnson, the Clinical Coordinator at Dentistry Design in McFarland, Wisconsin, told CNN. “The doctor cannot do proper treatment without a chart history and x-rays.”
As you can see these causes chaos and costs business income and gives a negative image as patients plan their week out and maybe take sick day for the doctors appointment just to find out that the dentist office an no longer accommodate them.
There are many ways to prevent these issues and or at least land back on your feet after a successful ransomware attack. These includes having a proper backup solutions in place just so that you can grab a copy of non-encrypted files from your backup storage and continue assisting your customers while your IT department actually put out the fire per say.
While fetching data from backup seems very easy however, it is yet time consuming task and knowing what is critical vs what you can live without during the outage is very important. Sort your backup in category which mark them as important verse non business critical category. These can actually save ton of time while restoring files from backup maybe even cut times from few hours to just half an hour.
Depending on what line of business you are in you might find it easier to divide them in “Year” folders i.e. 2018 Folder, 2019 Folder etc.. and then you can further divide into critical vs non critical folders. One example could be that anything payment and invoice related can be in non critical as those are not something you would require in a full out blackout of your data due to viruses or ransomware attack or in fact any of the cyberattacks.
Quote from the article: –
“Essentially the restorations are ongoing,” Brenna Sadler, a spokeswoman for Digital Dental Record, told CNN. “It’s a very difficult, lengthy, methodical process. So it’s taking some time.”
Here is another quote from the article. A scenario no one wants to go through of “What could go wrong” and having everything go wrong!
“It had a devastating effect on our office,” said Paul Levine, a dentist who runs a private practice near Milwaukee. “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, until this morning when they got us up running, we were not able to see half of our patients because we were handicapped from taking x-rays. You can’t see an emergency patient without an x-ray. You can’t see a new patient without x-rays.”
As a new owner you need to invest little bit on safeguarding yourself from these issues. These safeguard might look like waste of time and or money however, when things go wrong you at least have backup plans. It’s like having a car insurance it pays for itself when someone steals your car or unfortunate event of you having in an accident.
As you can see you can be out for days / weeks without vital business functionality. You can successfully prevent these issues if you plan accordingly and have proper backup plan in place. You can be proactive rather than waiting for cyberattack to render your business systems useless. You rather put checks in place to avoid these issues and future proof yourself from these nasty attacks and keep your business reputation and your royal clients happy.