Ransomware attack

[barq2]

Aside from ransomware, there is the issue of hard drives dying. They are mechanical devices and in time they fail. I'd go so far as to say you should expect them to fail. The question is more when rather than if. SSDs also have a finite lifespan.

My backup policy is to have more than one copy, in more than one place.

I have mirrored RAID hard drives at home. There is a nightly backup to a server 150km away plus a separate backup that lags a week behind. I also have two USB drives that I backup and take to work (i.e. swap drives every week so there is always a reasonably up to date version). It is designed to protect me from hardware failure, floods, fire or someone stealing my computer. 

Another tip - check your backups from time to time. Are the files where you expect? Are they up to date? If you had to restore everything, could you do it?

barq

[G.Elias]

You should have a word with the people responsible for the nhs computer network barq,they might have avoided what happened if they took onboard what you just posted,can't believe they were still running XP.

Guess thats government cuts for you eh?

[barq2]

You should have a word with the people responsible for the nhs computer network barq,they might have avoided what happened if they took onboard what you just posted,can't believe they were still running XP.

Guess thats government cuts for you eh?

Well the cuts are particularly relevant because the previous year they paid Microsoft for another year of XP support and security patches. I think it cost £5m. But they didn't do it this year. Lots of money that would normally go to maintaining infrastructure etc, is being diverted to simply keeping  patient services running as best they can. The Government is already strangling the NHS and will eventually kill it. (You can probably guess which political party I won't be voting for in June!)

In fairness, I should add that there are some specific cases where XP is genuinely needed. Take something like brain imaging, you can't really throw away a £2m fMRI scanner because it doesn't have the drivers/software to work with Win7/Win10. Likewise there are loads of factories with expensive CNC machines that are still on XP. But the point is you ONLY use XP for those specific cases, and you certainly don't keep your patient records, payroll, etc on XP. Ideally XP machines should not be attached to the internet.

[cmdline]

barq- you nailed it, in terms legacy OS/software is still used in many government places schools, hospitals, factories etc.

Since it costs thousands to get upgrades and as you said in many cases its actually issue with original manufacturer since software was designed long time ago in many cases its easier to use old system then do upgrades that cost millions.

Even thou this attack was blown out of proportion it was actually stopped within same day,and once news got out many places integrated security measures.

Such attacks will be more frequent in future given ransom used is almost impossible to track, as far as security goes many times its usually long before its exploited that its noticed,not to mention all the 0 day attacks that are discovered,given in most cases many companies have to rely on good will of those that find them to report, and in most cases they are not even compensated, which given skills not many companies opt in for paying for their mistakes.

[Jimking]

I love the non bill gates computers. They are one of the biggest company's in the world and they got there with simplicity and integrity. They value privacy and make products that even old people can use. I miss steve jobs, smart man. Everyone should utube his commencement speech at Berkley.

[misterbeefy]

I would have to say the privacy comes with a cost though, every program you want to run you have to have approved by apple. I'm a programmer myself and that is just an annoyance. IK there are ways around this but I never really got into the mac software. I like having full control of my PC. But that cryptolock is pretty much gonna put you in 2 situations. a) Buy a new system, or b) spend that money they want for your files. Anyway it's a hell of a program and has been in the news lately (giving bitcoin bad name), only good side to the whole thing is makes honest IT's like me a little money.. I do feel bad for anyone that gets it. It's like the old dreaded "blue screen of death".