SPECIAL REPORT: How to avoid becoming a ‘digital hostage’
Almost every day, Carlos Casillas, owner of ER Computer Doctors on Mesa, has someone come into his shop saying their data has been compromised.
“We have seen many occasions of people getting encrypted, but we have seen two or three costumers who had to pay to get there data decrypted,” Casillas said.
The small business owner told ABC-7 victims often pay hackers to get there information back. “It’s usually between three and five hundred dollars,” he said.
“Ransomware” attacks on are on the rise, especially, on small businesses who have little or no cyber security and depend on the files on their computer to run their business.
However, the number of small businesses actually attacked is hard to quantify. “Some businesses don’t report the actual incidents,” said Matt Davies, with the Federal Reserve Bank. “They may be reluctant to report because they may be embarrassed or maybe their mall business will suffer from reputation risk if they do self report.”
UTEP is currently working to better understand how prevalent Ransomware cyber security incidents are in El Paso “We’re still in the data collection phase, we we are not ready to release any numbers,” said UTEP Professor Dr. Mario Caire.
While it’s unclear just how common this issue is, the way it happens is well understood. An email is sent by the hacker with an embedded link, you click on the link and your computers files become encrypted, making them inaccessible. The only way to get them back is to pay the hacker a ransom.
“If a small business gets hacked, it can really devastate them, to where in some cases they go out of business,” said Joe Ferguson at the Small Business Development Center in El Paso, which held its first seminar for small business regarding cyber security this past summer.
“I had people coming up to me at the end of that seminar saying this was great,” said Ferguson. “This is going to become even a more important issue in years to come.”
Ferguson said they plan to hold more seminars in the future.
Davies has advice for the victims of Ransomeware attacks: “Don’t pay the ransom, it encourages the proliferation of that kind of attack.”
The FBI has resources on how to avoid falling prey.
