What To Do In The Aftermath Of A Cyberattack


Cyber criminals are the boogeymen of the internet age. We’re constantly being warned that they’re out there, just waiting to exploit any weakness in our systems and break in. There’s a lot of different reasons they might target you. If you hold customer credit card information, they may be after that. They might also want to hijack your computer and use it to commit other crimes from it. Obviously, you should be making attempts to beef up your security and prevent attacks in the first place, but these criminals are pretty clever. Each time you put up a new wall, they’ll find a way around it. That means you need to prepare yourself for the worst when it comes to cyber crime. Here’s what you should do if you’re attacked.

Have Insurance 
Having an insurance plan from somebody like My Cybersurance in place is vital. Not only will they help you improve your security day to day, they can help you work out what to do in the aftermath of an attack and potentially recover any lost data. Moving quickly is key and if you’re trying to handle it on your own you won’t know what you’re doing. You’ll just end up floundering and by the time you start putting a plan into action, it’ll be too late. 

Pull The Plug 
Ransomware is one of the most common ways they’ll get into your system. It usually comes as an attachment to an email and once it’s opened, it’ll show a message saying that you need to pay money to unlock the computers again. Never click on the message, this just allows it full access to your systems. As soon as it gets on your computer, the clock is ticking. You need to cut power to the computer immediately by pulling the plug. That way you can hopefully contain it to the one computer and make it far easier to fix the problem. 

Change Passwords 
If you’re getting hacked easily it’s probably because you’ve got weak passwords. Once they’re in they’ll know all of those passwords so it’s vital that you change them all straight away. Any accounts that have administrators access should be a priority. Do them first then move onto everything else. Choose different passwords for everything and make sure that you use strong passwords that contain uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols. There's a great article here with advice on how to secure your password, something that everyone would benefit from reading. 

Report It 
This last one is something that doesn’t happen that often. If somebody broke into your home or office and stole some paperwork out of your desk you wouldn’t think twice about telling the police. But when it comes to cybercrime, people don’t always view it as so serious. It’s exactly the same thing, just digital. When you get hacked, you’ve been the victim of a crime and you need to report it. It’s also important to let customers know if their details have been stolen because they might have to take steps to cancel cards etc. It’s not ideal having to tell your customers that but it’s better than waiting until their bank accounts are cleared out. 

The risk of cybercrime is growing all the time but if you take the right precautions, you can be ready for it.