Ransomware attack makes US Company employees lose jobs

    All these days we have seen malware stealing data and locking down data access for a ransom. Now, hereā€™s a piece of different news that might grab your attention.

    A company that was operating in the United States for 60 years was cyber-attacked in October last year, making the head of the company urged over 300 employees to leave their jobs and look for alternatives just before the Christmas 2019 holidays.

    The name of the company in a discussion is ā€˜The Heritage Companyā€™ which is a Fundraising firm based in Sherwood, Arkansas, United States.

    News is out that two of the Heritage servers- accounting systems and mail centers were hit by ransomware in Octā€™19 which led to disruption and digital repercussions. As the data was held for ransom, a huge amount was paid to hackers in exchange for a decryption key.

    Since then, the IT staff were working day and night to restore the data and as the company operations were halted, the CEO chose to pay the wages to the employees from her pocket.

    However, CEO Sandra Franecke could not pull it over and asked her company employees to either look for alternate jobs until the company restores its data or is thinking to close down the operations forever.

    A press update made on behalf of the CEO has confirmed the news yesterday. But did not specify the closure of the company as the data recovery services were still underway.

    Nevertheless, it reminds the fact that a ransomware attack on small and medium scale companies could spell doom for employees.

    Therefore, companies should make their mission-critical systems resilient by taking proactive Cybersecurity measures to safeguard their IT Infrastructure.

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    Naveen Goud
    Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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