Cyber Wolf and the 3 Businesses..Part 3 - Mrs Sticksworth
Posted on 8th February 2017 at 10:42
Mrs Sticksworth..
Mrs Sticksworth was very aware that Cyber security was something that as a business owner she should take into consideration, therefore she had taken some steps to mitigate possible issues.
She was a successful business owner who had a number of retail premises that relied very much on her IT systems, these systems relayed information back to head office, allowing the processing of sales information.
Although I said that Mrs Sticksworth had a focus on cyber security, her focus really was at a level that was on an ad hoc basis, more of a box ticking exercise, which meant that Cyber Wolf would only have to blow a little harder to compromise her business.
Data backups were performed on an occasional basis and although security software was installed on some systems, some of the software were free versions, which provided no real-time scanning (which is like having a sleeping security guard who is really only effective when you wake them up) and although others initially were paid for, the licenses had expired, so would provide little or no benefit until their licenses were renewed.
Unfortunately Mrs Sticksworth suffered a catastrophic failure, which was caused by one of her head office staff clicking on an email, that email turned out to be a rather nasty form of ransomware, the ransomware not only encrypted her files (which was immediately visible) it also opened a route for Cyber Wolf to compromise her systems, (sadly there was no indication this had happened) Cyber Wolf could access her data at a later date of his choosing, all of which was unbeknown to Mrs Sticksworth.
Unlike Mr Strawbale, Mrs Sticksworth did however have some data backups and was able to recover most of her data, however as previously mentioned the ransomware had allowed Cyber Wolf to leave a backdoor, that could be used at a later date to enter Mrs Sticksworth systems, something which happened a few weeks later with devastating effects.
What Mrs Sticksworth hadn’t known is that Cyber Wolf, like most hackers will gain access to your systems and in order to get the best reward for their efforts will go to great lengths to hide their presence, this is exactly what happened to Mrs Sticksworth, once Cyber wolf had learnt how all the systems were linked and where the important company data was located, he accessed, collected it and exploited for great financial reward.
This whole episode proved very costly to Mrs Sticksworth, to her business both financially and in time and effort. Mrs Sticksworth has only just recovered from this episode, the emotional strain alone was nearly too much, however bravely she committed to take the threats from cyber-crime more seriously.
CyberBabybot was a little confused, when his father started the story he thought that Mrs Sticksworth had taken the right steps to protect her business…yet she also seems to be a victim of Cyber Crime
Seeing his confusion his father told his son that although Mrs Sticksworth had taken steps to protect her business, the issue was that she hadn’t managed the process properly and therefore the Cyber Wolf was able to compromise her business and exploit her businesses vulnerabilities.
Mrs Sticksworth however had learnt her lesson and to make sure this didn’t happen again, she sought advice from her peers, especially Mr BricksnMortar who was a personal friend, this allowed her to better protect her business for the future.
Part 4
Cyber Wolf and Mr BricksnMortar Coming Soon…
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