Message from our Loyal computer consultants: “In recent weeks we have been seeing an increased number of infections caused by the ransomware Crytpolocker (or its clones). In the last 24 hours we have had three businesses infected with this ransomware, so the rate of infection does not appear to be slowing down. We have found the most recent trend is infected emails are sent on a THURSDAY IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON (12-2pm) and these appear to be from a legitimate source (such as an AGL bill or Australia Post package awaiting pickup)”.
Be warned…..

Business in the pet industry are even more at risk because many are small businesses and they are not up to date on latest trends. Ransomware works like this: you open a seeingly benign attachment to an email almost always sent by someone you don’t know, OR the email might be from “Austpost.com” or “AGL.com” . The attachment  might not be labelled “.exe” or “.zip” which are the ones we are used to looking for. Recent ones have been “.jpg” or “pdf” – so we think that they are OK. Sometimes they say “click here for your bill” and that infects you also.

When you open these, the code inside these attachments gets into your computer and locks you out of your data. You then receive a “ransom note” saying that you must pay heaps of $$ into a particular bank account to get access to your data again. Sometimes you pay the $$ and still don’t get access.

DO THIS:

• keep your antivirus up to date, but NOTE that antivirus doesn’t do a good job on ransomware.
• keep your WINDOWS UPDATES up to date, as these do provide some protection.
• DO NOT OPEN any suspicious attachments – PHONE the supposed provider to ensure that the email and attachment is real.
• BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP at least weekly. There is nothing quite as satisfying as thumbing your nose at the criminals and just replenishing with your backup.

Pets Australia’s association with Loyal IT gives us great access to current computer happenings that can affect your business.

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