“Your computer system has been attacked. Contact the following address to negotiate the ransom”. The appearance of this simple message on a computer screen heralds the nightmare of a ransomware attack: malicious programs that block the computer where the user stores their personal or business information and demand payment to recover the equipment and their data. What should you do in these cases?
A race against time
Time is of the essence in this situation. If you’ve been affected by an attack of this type, you can report it to the National Cybersecurity Institute by sending an email to incidencias@incibe-cert.es, or you can call 017 for instructions. We also recommended that you report it: in this way, the source of the crime can be investigated and you will be collaborating in prevention efforts and actions to capture the cybercriminal.
A team at your service
In addition, if you have cyber risk insurance a whole team of professionals will be straight to work to help you. Insurers offer 24-hour services to slow down and fix the attack. On the one hand, a computer support team will work directly on the affected devices, while on the other it will act in parallel on the legal and judicial aspect of the attack. This issue is especially important, since the leakage of information about third parties must be reported to the Data Protection Agency within 72 hours to avoid penalties.
Coronavirus-related breaches
In the last year, these types of cyber threats have increased notably. The digital migration that the coronavirus crisis has imposed has made life easier for cyber thieves: teleworking has opened multiple security breaches in organizations. However, it should be remembered that these attacks no longer only affect big corporations: SMEs and self-employed professionals are by no means safe from this type of crime.
Hence, cyber risk policies allow coverage to be customized to the specific characteristics of each business. These insurance policies cover the possible economic losses that come with having a business paralyzed during the attack, in addition to expenses related to forensic investigations, legal defense, payment of fines, and the cleaning and recovery of the systems.
