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Update your systems now or face losing data

John Stanford

You will have seen in the press recently that a massive cyber-attack has had an adverse impact on organisations worldwide.

Before you read any further, please make a call. Check your IT team or service provider has applied the latest Microsoft security updates – particularly MS17-010. If you haven’t, there’s little in this email that can help you, so please ensure you do this with urgency.

The worldwide outbreak of ransomware virus ‘WannaCrypt’ has and continues to impact organisations worldwide, from hospitals in the UK and car manufacturers and telecoms providers in Europe, to transport firms in the US.

The virus spreads itself, so you do not need to be ‘targeted’ – the virus could infect you automatically. The only reasonable way to protect against this is to update your Windows systems with the MS17-010 ‘patch’, issued earlier this year. A secondary (and no less important) measure is to ensure your backups include current, offline copies (for example to tape) as well as online copies. Anti-virus is also an important (but not perfect) measure.

The advice of the National Cyber Security Centre on how to mitigate this threat can be found here.

While cyber-threats are mentioned on a daily basis, this threat has a significant impact, and will continue to do so if you do not act now.

If you would like to discuss with our specialist Cyber Security team, please contact us.