Legal Field IT Specialists CEO, Robert Finley, answering some questions from firms regarding ransomware attacks on businesses:

What type of cyber threat is the most lucrative for cyber criminals?

Ransomware is currently the biggest money maker for those seeking to profit from cyber threats, followed by spear phishing attacks that directly target business owners and staff who have access to the business' bank accounts.

What are the stages of a ransomware attack?

Nowadays, you've either been hit with ransomware or you know somebody that has. Basically, it goes like this.

  1. A business computer falls victim to ransomware.
  2. The ransomware encrypts all the data it finds. This includes data on your servers, PC's and laptops, even remote Google drives and Microsoft OneDrive, your offsite data... basically everything. It will search for and locate everything that the victimized computer has access to and then it encrypts all that data.
  3. You'll receive a Ransom Note (i.e. Popup message on your computer screen). The note will demand payment in the hundreds, thousands or even millions of dollars. For example, a hospital in Hollywood California received a ransom note for $17 million dollars. Their entire hospital was down for a whole week, and the hospital's backups were unusable, so they had to settle with the criminals.
  4. Your ransom payment must be made using Bitcoin or other designated electronic currencies. These types of currencies are basically untraceable.
  5. If you don't pay within 24-48 hours, then the ransom doubles.
  6. If you don't pay within 72 hours, the decryption key is deleted. At this point there's no way the criminals can recover your data...even if you were to pay the ransom at this time.
  7. If you do pay the ransom before the deadline, then in almost all cases, you'll actually receive your data back. The criminals figure that if you didn't get your data, then word would get around and nobody would pay.
  8. But, if you do pay, they target you over and over. So, you're screwed either way. You're basically 'between a rock and a hard place' when this happens.

If you feel that your law firm could use some assistance with setting up proper security for your firm so that you don't experience this business-ending catastrophe call us today. Legal Field IT Specialists provides tailored IT support services to law firms to protect them from the dangers of online threats as well as working with you to ensure high productivity levels in your workplace.