Cloud Based Website Threat Intelligence Protection

As you are probably aware by now, last Monday (1st October 2019) there was a cyber-attack on some major health and human services in Victoria.

If not, see article below for more information:

https://7news.com.au/news/health/multiple-victorian-hospitals-hacked-in-suspected-ransomware-attack-c-481074

Cyber-attacks, viruses, spam, ransomware or any type of malicious hacks and protecting your data is always at the top of our agenda.

We were notified by a client whose wife works at one of the hospitals to outline the severity of this breach. This raised alarm bells within vCloud Group to do some urgent research to ensure the continuity of your business and enable whatever we need to protect your systems and data.

As much as we have a solid data backup and off-site copy plan, this will still enable downtime, to restore your servers and data to a point in time before the malware installed itself. So, we went looking for a solution that will enable us to protect your system. What we found was a web content filter.

WHAT IS A WEB CONTENT FILTER?

A web content filter is pretty much a scanner that will scan every link you click on, from you email, on a website, that you receive in a instant chat (skype, live chat, teams, etc) and double check that the link is not malicious in any way.

Right now, we are relying on the fact, staff are looking at the link and double checking the validity before click on it. Let me tell you even we have been caught out and nearly downloaded ransomware into our network.

HOW IS RANSOMWARE INSTALLED

The number one issue to date is ransomware. The majority of ransomware comes via email. And as much as our unified email threat management system clears 99% of spam. Some still gets through.

Once enabled, most ransomware embeds into your local computer/desktop and can sit dormant for up to 6 months before being activated. Once activated, it then starts looking for network paths and shared drives on your computer network to infect (you will notice this by your files being renamed). They then leave a demanding screen on your desktop to pay a ransom so they will unlock the virus on files. Never do this, as once you pay the ransom the virus never really removed, its left dormant till another time and then you will need to pay more to get your files unlocked.

We encourage you that you implement this web based intelligent protection system. This will work with both onsite and if you are running in the cloud. If you are unsure of the configuration of your network and how this can be best implemented contact us on 1800 825 683 and we can discuss the best course of action to protect your business and data.