Ransomware is one of the fastest growing cyber-crimes in the world.
Last year, 37% of businesses were victim to a ransomware attack. A ransomware attack is where cyber criminals infiltrate your network (or device) and steal your data by encrypting it. The data is still there, but you can’t access it.
Then they demand you pay a large ransom fee for the encryption key.
If you don’t pay the demand (often tens or even hundreds of thousands), they delete your data. All of it, down to the last byte.
Being the victim of a ransomware attack is extremely stressful for you and your entire team but along with the stress, you must worry about the cost of the ransom fee, reputational damage and downtown for your dealership. The average downtime experienced during a ransomware attack in 2021 was 22 days! That’s 22 days of work that your dealership has lost.
Official advice from the experts is not to pay any ransomware demands. However, a new survey has shown that a massive 97% of business leaders who’ve experienced a ransomware attack in the past would pay up quickly if they were attacked again
A third of them would pay instantly.
What does that tell you about what a nightmare the whole thing is for any business?
The other problem is, when you pay a ransomware demand, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get your data back. On average, only 65% of data is restored once a fee is paid.
You may face further extortion. And by letting cyber criminals know that your business pays ransom fees, it’s likely that you’ll face subsequent attacks in the future.
So what’s the best way to deal with ransomware?
First, you should put in place the right security measures to try to prevent an attack:
- Educate your people on cyber security and best practice
- Implement multi-factor authorization across all your applications
- Use a password manager
- Make sure all updates are installed quickly
- And you should always have a working backup in place – ideally, one where older data is retained and cannot be changed
It is also strongly recommended that your dealership has a response and recovery plan in place in the event of a ransomware attack. This has many benefits, not only will your team be able to respond faster, but it should also reduce the amount of downtime suffered as you’ve already considered exactly what needs to happen. This means that your dealership can get back up and running in no time, with very little damage.
This is what we are experts in. This is what we do. We help dealerships increase their cyber security to reduce their chances of being affected. Let’s chat.
