If you’re a Garmin user, you won’t have failed to notice that the Garmin service was offline for several days at the end of July 2020. Whilst Garmin themselves were initially rather quiet about the reason behind the outage, a statement was released that highlighted the cause of the outage – ransomware.
Garmin Ltd. was the victim of a cyber attack that encrypted some of our systems on July 23, 2020. As a result, many of our online services were interrupted…
It’s no surprise to many of us in the Information Security world that ransomware has again struck a large, multi-national operation. Many companies, small and large are at risk of attack in this way. If someone as large as Garmin can be attacked successfully, it’s just as likely that your SME, school, college or university could be attacked too.
Here’s a few things to think about:
- BACKUP! Honestly, there’s nothing more important and simpler than backing up your data. Back up regularly to cloud and local, hardware-based solutions too. If your device gets compromised/encrypted, all you have to do is clean the device, re-install a backup and you’re good to go again. Super-easy, super quick, limited business downtime.
- AWARENESS! We’re all a little bit laissez-faire and fatigued by security warnings. But…honestly, it’s the best form of protection. Often, malware and hackers gain access to your systems because the user allows them in! So, please, don’t forget to continue to raise awareness of risks.
- UPDATE! Keep all your software up-to-date, those annoying updates and subsequent reboots are essential to protect your devices. The updates close security holes and help keep hackers out.
- PROTECT! Use anti-virus and anti-malware to protect your devices and keep this updated too.
- DEFEND! Talk to your network solutions provider and ensure that they have set everything they can to prevent exploits attacking your network. Set up your firewalls properly and keep unwanted traffic out.
SWGfL is proud to partner with TrendMicro and have negotiated preferential rates for education establishments on their products. Answer our short eligibility questions and purchase today.
TrendMicro also feature as a solutions provider on the NoMoreRansom website. Provided by the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands’ police, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, the site helps users recover data after attack by some of the known ransomware types. TrendMicro, along with other providers are able to decrypt certain ransomware families. NoMoreRansom maintains a lists of families that can be decrypted. TrendMicro have produced a knowledgebase article about how to configure systems to prevent ransomware, with links to families they can decrypt.
Hackers don’t take summer holidays, so whilst it may be quiet for schools, colleges and universities during the summer break, now is the time to prepare, maintain and verify that your systems still remain secure.
