Cryptolocker. A fiendishly evil, but highly effective, malicious IT attack; once it infiltrates your IT system, it is set to stay and let nothing and no one else in. More and more articles are being written about how this Trojan, using encryption, locks up your data. Cyber criminals then demand money for your data to be unlocked, but more worryingly, it’s the ease with which it attacks the IT infrastructure in the first instance that causes the most concern.
By hiding within perceived innocent files such as Excel spreadsheets or documents, robust firewall protection and traditional security measures are not enough. Malicious IT attacks of this nature are driving more and more businesses to invest in more secure IT systems, such as penetration testing, or to look for real, proven alternatives to recover from such breaches.

On this particular occasion, the most reliable solution for a Cryptolocker attack, is to carry out a data restore. However, the subject of data recovery isn’t just about the ability to restore business critical information from malicious attacks such as; viruses corrupting data, phishing attacks stealing data, or in this case, Trojans that make all business data inaccessible.

Data Recovery is rapidly becoming a higher priority on the CIO Agenda, to mitigate risk and to ensure that in the event of an unplanned event (a disaster or human error), the business will not lose data nor access to data. For IT operations and support, planned events (such as maintenance and upgrades) require a backup plan, in case there is a need to ‘rollback’ should the upgrade or support fix not resolve the issue, or worse still, cause more serious outages. Then there is the need to meet compliance requirements – with more and more businesses under more complex and stringent regulatory pressures, forced to retain data for months, years or tens of years, the need for efficient, cost effective file and messaging archives has become a necessity.
So, the next time you are planning IT budgets, it is worth remembering to reach out to a trusted advisor, such as MTI, who can consult and provide you with options on how to create clean, secure, efficient, backup, restore and archive processes your business can rely upon. Whether it’s an on-premise solution or in the cloud (with offerings such as MTI BaaS / MTI SAFE), data recovery has increased as a business priority. A backup, restore and archive process is no longer considered a mundane, daily task, it has become a business-essential activity. The question you need to ask is can you afford not to protect your intellectual property, your revenue streams and ultimately your customers’ satisfaction?