Barcelona, September 2020

On September 9, this attack rendered all the company’s computer systems inoperative

According to the news published on the MERCA2 website, this event was a ransomware attack. Ransomware is a form of malware that locks users’ files or devices and then claims anonymous online payment to unlock the system.

According to what was published by the same source, it is not the first time that a large Spanish company has received a hack. Companies like Telefónica, SER, or Everis suffered from it in the past. One every three firms in Spain suffer this type of attack, which endangers their operations and the data of their users.

 

We enquiriedJusto López, our cybersecurity expert on how and why these types of attacks occur and what we must do to prevent them.

“Despite having firewalls of all types and conditions, these types of attacks can only be contained by training employees and establishing very limited permissions for the users in the systems, both on their PCs and in shared resource systems, establishing a Policy of the Principle of Least Privileges.
A tool like Aruba’s UEBA Introspect could help as long as it has an agent running on the machines that blocks abnormally executed encryption processes.”

“For this type of situation, I say it is better to be safe than sorry. A security audit / consultancy will easily surface these problems. We also consider that training sessions for employees is the most useful tool (detecting false URLs, being attentive to emails from suspicious origins, etc.) to avoid risks. There is nothing like a proactive monitoring to be agile in containing an attack and having a contingency plan that offers you the peace of mind that provides the fact that you know in case of disaster you can continue with your business open and fully operational ” , points Justo

 
To request a cybersecurity audit for your company, please click through the following link.
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