A dental practice hit by CryptoLocker avoided paying ransom for its data by restoring sensitive patient records from a cloud backup.
Cyber-crime is relentless and devastating, costing U.S. businesses in excess of $100 billion each year. An increasingly common tactic employed by cyber-criminals is to steal and encrypt business data, then demand ransom for the decryption key. Called ransomware, this type of hacking is particularly insidious, demanding that victims pay for something they already own.
In 2013, a ransomware variant called CryptoLocker stared making the rounds, infecting hundreds of computers and racking up millions of dollars in damages. One such business was a dental office, where an unsuspecting employee fell for a phishing scheme that resulted in the encryption of nearly 1 TB of data, including patient charts, X-rays and other important records. (Please Note: there are many network security issues here that we will discuss in an upcoming article)
Thankfully, the dental practice had invested in reliable cloud-based data protection, which made it possible to get a full data restore overnight and avoid paying the ransom. Within a day, the virus had been wiped off the network, business applications were running and patient records were accessible again.
Data protection is a must, especially for medical practices subjected to stringent regulations covering patient records. With cyber-criminals constantly finding new ways to break into networks and steal data, it’s essential to have a recovery plan when they succeed. When one of the Six Data Gremlins* attacks, be ready to fight back.
Our Zinc™ cloud-based data protection services have a strong track record of helping businesses recover from cyber attacks. Remember, data loss has forced many a businesses to close its doors, and you don’t want to be in that position, especially when sensitive medical data is involved. Our military-grade services, supported by dual-coast SSAE-16 compliant data centers, offer change-block tracking technology for faster backups and restores.
*Six masters of data destruction: Klepto (theft), Scratch (equipment failure), Mayhem (natural disaster), Mal (viruses), Whoopsie Daisy (user error), and Scorch (fire).
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