If you were reading the news recently, you may have saw that the city of Atlanta was the victim of a ransomware attack. This attack took multiple city services down such as, online bill paying, municipal court information, and water department services. City employees were asked to not turn on their computers in order to help prevent the further spreading of the ransomware. Atlanta has reached out to the FBI, DHS, Microsoft, Cisco, and others for assistance in investigating this incident and for remediation.
This is a great reminder that up-to-date data backups are a must have for small businesses. Having these backups in place can allow you to more quickly respond to the ransomware and get back to business quicker by being able to restore the lost and encrypted data.