As the malware fallout in Asia and Europe rages on, those affected are starting to realize they are going to have to pay up or abandon their data. Someone has figured out how to stop the spread with a kill switch built into the virus, but those affected still have their systems bricked. Most likely what is going on now is companies with multiple computers are doing analysis of how many systems they can afford to lose the data on and how much redundancy of important files they have.

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To call this event a nightmare is an understatement. There have been so many fuckups on monumental levels that many of the people leading these security teams should be fired. Maybe in the future this will finally have people take security seriously and not just hire someone without enough knowledge. The fact of the matter is IF YOU ARE A COMPANY THAT HAS VALUABLE AND SENSITIVE DATA, SECURITY NEEDS TO BE YOUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY.

Andreas Aantonopolous has been saying for years that security is the most important thing that no company takes seriously until something happens and this is the perfect example of that idea at work. Security in the digital world is the equivalent to guards on a caravan in the middle ages. Having no or useless security just makes you a honey pot for attack. The people running these types of software don’t care if they are affecting a hospital or a fortune 500 company. 

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Just because you aren’t a business that might be a traditional target for attack doesn’t mean that you should put security on the back burner or make it lower priority compared to other costs. This is the problem. Security is like insurance,  you don’t realize how important the investment into it is, until you need it. Now because of corner cutting to begin with, the companies that are affected en masse are going to be paying out 10x what it would have cost them in good security practices. 

The benefit to continued hacks however, is that hopefully these companies learn their lesson and the security systems of tomorrow will avoid mass scale attacks. However I think this is just a pipedream because as security becomes more advanced, so too will programs that hackers are using to infiltrate. Security isn’t a one time investment, it is a yearly cost that you must upkeep in order to stay ahead of those looking to attack you. If you do not make this investment, eventually you will pay the price.