ON Catholic School Faces Rising Downtime Costs After Ransomware

Exploit: Ransomware
Company: Waterloo Catholic District School Board
Industry: Education
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/waterloo-catholic-district-school-board-responding-to-significant-malware-incident-1.5375226

In a second attack in as many weeks, another Kitchener, Ontario organization has fallen victim to cyber attackers. This time, Ransomware targeting Ontario’s eighth largest Catholic school system caused a major disruption in services. According to Chief Managing Officer John Shewchuk, “There is no indication that personal or business information has been taken as a result of the attack.” Ongoing forensic investigations are taking place to identify the true nature of the attack. To now, downtime costs continue to soar as their network is still not working at full capacity.

The Waterloo Catholic District School Board reacted quickly by immediately seeking help from the hands of a third party security company. While most SMBs take this tactic as a result of inadequate room in their budgets or misconception of low profile invulnerability, cyber criminals understand the limited capacities of SMBs as they are often targeted more frequently. Reacting to ransomware is typically the most costly and most damaging approach with unpredictable costs. Although nothing is 100%, proactive prevention is the highly favoured approach towards safeguarding an organization’s assets and information.

Dedicated security leadership does not always have to be out of reach for SMBs. Simplified programs including Security Awareness Training and next-gen antivirus tools can help bolster basic cyber security with an additional layer of prevention. Organization wide education and Dark Web monitoring tools can provide enough insight to keep SMBs on the right path to a healthier cyber posture without overreaching beyond budget or even simply left waiting to react.

Protect Your Business Against Modern Cyber Threats

More than ever, organizations of all sizes have been facing a historical rise in cyber attacks and data breaches. Talk to a cyber security expert today and find out how we can provide expert consulting and a portfolio of Cyber Security solutions designed to protect your organization against today’s most prevalent threats.