Last week, the malware Petya infected computers worldwide in a cyberattack, including the diversified Danish giant Maersk, owners of the largest shipping line in the world. In addition to several other industries, Maersk also owns the global terminal operator APM Terminals, and they were affected by Petya as well.
In an update issued to customers yesterday, the company has indicated their progress back to being fully operational, although not all global systems are 100% online. If this could happen to Maersk with a well-planned network and IT security, it can happen to any company.
Is your trade data protected?
It used to be that the primary concern for IT departments was a benign virus that would infect a computer, wipe a hard drive or cause some sort of prank or practical joke. Those days are long past, as both criminal and state actors put out viruses and malware that are meant to hijack data and require financial compensation to unlock in an untraceable currency like Bitcoin.
Today’s data is of far more competitive value, and systems administrators need to take great pains to ensure this data isn’t being exfiltrated.
- Are the schematics, bill of materials and list of suppliers for your company’s newest-and-greatest product at risk from being stolen and brought to market faster, cheaper and is a counterfeit version?
- Were the contracts or legal documents on a laptop taken to a country known for hackers or corporate IPR theft redirected by a computer that was tampered with while out of your employee’s sights for any period of time?
- Did a company employee use a public wifi network that may have placed a keyboard logging script somewhere that is capturing email exchanges and passwords to sensitive systems?
Where all of these things used to be the province of movie plots, today they are real risks and stories in the world of corporate espionage. No company should feel bulletproof, but should instead assume themselves paranoid as a good business practice.
Everglory would like to offer three pieces of advice for cybersecurity for our customers to ensure a continuity of supply chain operations and recovery in the event of an incident.
Ensure all servers and computers are updated with the latest security patches.
In today’s world, not everything is preventable. “Zero-day exploits” are holes in systems that governments or malicious hackers will use to take control of a system. But the majority of threats can be minimized by ensuring that servers, computers and mobile devices are all running the latest versions of their operating systems, including ensuring a steady routine of security patch downloads and installations.
Have a company policy for travel computers and mobile devices.
There are a number of ways to isolate exposure to foreign viruses, trojans, malware and other nefarious things. Computers taken to certain at-risk countries should always be quarantined from business networks until they’ve been wiped clean – which means maybe have a “travel” computer for executives that contains the minimum amount of data and software. We also suggest installing VPN software that provides an encrypted tunnel to another country for data to pass in and out.
Include a cyber attack in corporate disaster recovery plans.
Our offices, clients and vendors in hurricane or typhoon prone areas have plans if a storm is headed their way and requires them to close their office and evacuate. Companies should ask if a redundant copy of their network or storage is available in another location or if their insurance policy covers the costs of recovering from a cyber attack or being knocked offline by one somewhere through their network.
