This time cybercrime hit close to home. May 2, 2020, York University was hit by a ‘major cyber incident’ that affected their Office 365, website, on-campus access to the internet, VPN for remote access, CRM for student email communication, internal drives and more.
Cyber Security Experts, including Andre Vittorio of Idealogical, says it could be a ransomware attack. “Ransomware attack is a rising trend in the cybercrime industry and the York University Cyberattack appears to be one of it”, says Andre.
Ransomware is a kind of cyber-attack where cybercriminals will penetrate to your systems(s) and can take your entire IT network as a hostage to demand a ransom amount. “All a hacker needs is access to one computer, and ransomware attack is one of the most lethal cyber-attacks for small and medium-sized businesses.”
Want to learn more about the type of cyber-attacks? Read Top 3 Ways Hackers Will Attack Your Network
One thing we need to remember is York University is a giant institution; they have the means and resources to recover. Even then, they are taking weeks to recover. Imagine that kind of an attack on a manufacturing company – you cannot access your company emails, your Autodesk, your production line, your computers, every access point to your business can be taken away from you for weeks and until you pay the ransom. And, there is no guarantee that your data will be returned or recovered to its original version.
As the number of cyber-attacks increases in Canada, it will grab more media attention, which could be bad for the reputation of a business of any size. Now is the time when businesses should start taking cyber-attacks more seriously and proactively work towards securing every endpoint.
“I always advise my clients and push them to have a multi-layered security strategy in place,” added Andre. What is a multi-layered security strategy?