Cyber Attacks: Internet is Like the Game "Telephone"

Our names are Tom Mitt, founder, and Jake Polzin, president of TBG Technologies, an IT support company since 2004.

Merriam-Webster says “cyber” means: “of, relating to, or involving computers or computer networks (such as the Internet) the cyber marketplace.” Pretty good definition, right?

The internet has transformed the world. Cyber-something is a part of our vocabulary now that the internet has transformed the world. Did you know that Facebook has over 1.5 billion users that are active in any given month? and that number is growing. Google has somewhere around 250 million users and Amazon has over 20 million subscribers to its “Prime” service. How do I know this? I looked it up on the internet, of course.

The internet has become as important to our world as telephones and roads. And as we all know – some more than others – it is a wide-open “wild west” environment, where just about anything goes. Besides emails, we do our research, banking, planning, even dating using the internet.

The internet has the unique quality of appearing to be private and individualized while at the same time being wide open and incredibly accessible. It only feels like it is private. It is critical that you understand this.

Most people think of emails and text messages on the internet as being just between them and the other end of the line. Unfortunately, this is wrong. Remember those can-and-string telephones a lot of us made when we were kids? People think the internet is like that. When they send an email, it goes right from their computer to the other computer directly. Absolutely wrong.

The internet is more like that game “telephone” where one person tells another something, and they tell another person, who tells another person, and so on. The message passes through an unknown number of computers, called “routers,” before it reaches its destination. And any one of those other computers can intercept that message, read it, store it, even alter it before passing it on. It is almost impossible to tell it has been altered when it is received.

This has not escaped the attention of those who want to take advantage of others. They can intercept messages if they get access to one of these routers and get your email address, usernames, and passwords. And they can send messages using that info to people in your address book. Ever get an email that looks like it is from someone you know, but obviously is not from them? That is what can happen.

This is how the worst type of virus – ransomware – gets started. Once in your computer, it can encrypt all your data, making it impossible to use. The cyber-criminal demands payment to release that data. In a lot of cases, you have no choice but to pay. Some organizations have paid millions of dollars to get their data back. Just this year, there have been serious ransomware attacks that have affected millions of people, disrupting fuel and food supplies. These are just the ones we know about.

There are only two ways to avoid paying ransom. First, don’t let the ransomware in at all. A good anti-virus program, fully up-to-date and running, will prevent most of these attacks. Unfortunately, even with that, some ransomware can get in. So, the second solution (the only REAL solution) is to have a very good, up-to-date backup that is not available to the bad guys. This way, you can tell them to go pound sand if they do get in.

Backups, backups and more backups! This is the safety mantra of the new cyber world. Have copies of your data. Multiple copies in multiple locations. And test the backups, make sure they are actually good. You don’t want to find out the backup is bad when you need it the most.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting educational information so you’re able to become the best business owner you can be. We’ll touch on backups, anti-virus, internet safety, cyber-attacks, ransomware, the cloud, email safety, VOIP phone systems, and others.

Tom Mitt is the founder and Jake Polzin is the president of TBG Technologies, located at 11300 W. Greenfield Avenue, West Allis, Wis. 53214. Tom can be reached at toomas@tbgtechnologies.com and Jake can be reached at jake@tbgtechnologies.com. www.tbgtechnologies.com We Make Technology Behave.