Ransomware has been on the rise lately with so many incidents reported recently it only reminds us how much of a threat they actually are. They can attack any system and POS is no exception to it.
So, having said this, how can restaurants, retailers, leisure operators and businesses in the hospitality department or any business using POS systems can protect themselves against ransomware?
It is quite simple, backup and disaster recovery. Backing up files and setting up a disaster recovery plan can prove to be very helpful against ransomware. veeam cloud connect azure is a Good Backup option to do Data backups.
A Different Threat for POS Systems
POS systems are no stranger to ransomware and other cyber-attacks. One of the biggest example we saw a couple of years back was of an organized credit card fraud which was carried out by Albert Gonzalez and his team.
He stole credit card details from the POS system and used them to buy good worth millions. That is a huge amount of money. If they ransomware protection this would not have happened.
Ransomware poses a different kind of threat to POS systems. In a ransomware attack, the main objective is not to steal the financial details or personal information, it is primary used to bring down the whole system, completely.
This is done by using advanced encryption methods to shut down the users’ access and lock the files and therefore ask for a ransom for the decryption key.
Ransomware Protection- Backup & DR
Ransomware variants designed specifically to target POS systems are out there and without any ransomware protection, it is impossible to protect your company or business from these attacks.
StoneFly offers many ransomware protection solutions that offer end-to-end encryption, threat detections, multiple backup destinations. Synchronous and asynchronous replication and many more.
Other than this, the recovery times are also very low. RTOs are less than 15 minutes, this means that all your data would be recovered in a matter of minutes and there is no need to pay any sort of ransom money.
Another important thing to note is that these attackers target outdated POS systems. If we take a look back at the WannaCry cyber-attack, we can see that it targeted a vulnerability in the systems which was present in the old version of windows and since windows were not updated so it spread like wildfire. A backup disaster recovery solution is necessary for smooth business continuity.
So, it is also important to keep your systems updated and run security updates and patches regularly.
Conclusion
Ransomware is more common than ever nowadays. In order to protect your business against it, you need to opt for a disaster recovery appliance and above it, you also need to make sure that all your systems are updated regularly. This, will surely, make your bossiness ransomware proof.
