Author’s Note: I write my own blogs. That’s unusual. Blogs are often authored by a service and then reposted, especially in IT, or written by AI from a few key words. Instead, I choose the topics that might be of most interest to our clients and write to them – to you – directly, in my own words. While it does take a little more time to write my own content, it does mean that we are well versed in the subjects I send to you. So, please always feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or comments about anything I write, including any topics you’d like to learn more about. Thank you. – Robert Hood
In my nearly 45 years in IT, I’ve seen some scary things. Being Halloween, here are some of the scariest – but these don’t end with the rolling credits or when the costumes get hung up. These can haunt you for weeks to years and leave you the poorer for it.
DISK NOT FOUND….
Turning your computer on in the morning and seeing this white text on a black background, says this is probably not going to be your day. Especially if you decided to store important data on your local disk and not backed up. Time to call up the IT witch doctors and have them conjure up spells to get your data back. Otherwise, be ready for flashbacks of Groundhog Day where you’ll spend your next days or weeks reliving the past by recreating the same work.
Good Morning. Your data has been encrypted. Please pay $500,000 in bitcoin to get it back before we sell it. Have a good day.
If you see this in the morning, you’ll probably feel sick. But don’t’ despair, look around, you’ll likely be in good company with the rest of your coworkers, with all of you looking like the Grimm Reaper is paying you a visit – as all your data is likely dead, dead, dead. Hopefully your IT crew will have some resurrection potion in the form of good backups, otherwise your job or business may be dead as well.
Why did you have me wire $1,200,000 to Russia?
If you’re a business owner or manager and you see an email like this from your accountant, you’ll likely want to go Freddy Krueger on them, as it seems they fell for a phishing scheme with someone charading as you. Instead of asking for candy, you’ll be asking the police to get your money back. But all they will find are ghosts of the company you sent the funds too. Might be time prep the business for mummification.
At SpotLink®, we’re not the mad hatter, but we are often able to pull a rabbit out of our hat by having good structures, policies, and procedures. That way we can be the white knight standing guard to keep these types of nightmares from happening or minimizing how scary they are when they do. Please give us a call if that sounds better than a trip through the forbidden forest.
Robert Hood
CEO & Founder
SpotLink®