Cyber news: hacker infiltration and ransomware

Following the launch of the Cyber Risk Clinic last May, we give the floor to several cyber experts, active within this new structure. In this series of “cyber news”, they decipher for you the issues related to these particular risks and share concrete cases of cyberattacks, encountered in their professional practice.

For the first episode of this series dedicated to cyber risks, we asked 3 questions to Steven Meyer, CEO and Julien Bressieux, COO of ZENDATA, partner of the Cyber Risk Clinic.

Traditional antivirus and firewalls simply aren’t enough to protect you against ever more sophisticated attacks.

Who is really affected by cyberattacks?

Cyberattacks are now one of the main threats for companies, which can jeopardise both their reputation and their business. Traditional antivirus and firewalls simply aren’t enough to protect you against ever more sophisticated attacks, as evidenced by the rise of ransomware that also releases the most sensitive data. The vast majority of hacked companies where we operate had security solutions in place, but these were not continuously monitored by specialists, able to understand and process alerts.

SMEs, even when they do not process sensitive data, are today the daily targets of criminals. Indeed, the protection of SMEs is very often insufficient and hackers are aware of this. However, we must not dramatise because solutions exist to address this risk, which has become strategic.

Isn’t preventing cyberattacks the role of my team or my IT service provider?

Cybersecurity and IT are two different specialities that pursue distinct objectives but must be complementary. Cyber experts should assess your threats, exposure, and risk tolerance so they can determine what protection services you need. They must then be up to date on new hacker techniques in order to be able to proactively adapt your protection.

What protection should be put in place?

If it is important to choose the best solutions on the market because some are better than others; good protection must be personalised to your strategic risks and above all be continuously managed by cyber engineers able to detect the slightest incident and ensure an adapted response as soon as possible.

This is why the Cyber Risk Clinic‘s “Protection” pack, defined jointly by Clinic.of.digital and Loyco, allows you to benefit from personalised and efficient protection so that digital technology cannot affect your strategic risks.

Infiltrated hackers
Concrete case of cyberattack

Following fraudulent emails sent to a partner, a Geneva consulting company of around twenty employees called on ZENDATA to conduct an investigation. During this, their engineers discovered that hackers had been present in the infrastructure for more than 3 months in order to be able to alter the backups, read all the exchanges by email and have an extensive vision so that the attack can be the most profitable.

In less than 96 hours, engineers were able to isolate the compromised infrastructure, find the initial attack vector, fix the vulnerabilities and implement supervised protection from ZENDATA’s Geneva security operations centre (SOC).

The reputation and activity of this company have therefore been preserved and it now benefits from continuous protection (licences, ongoing management & interventions) for less than CHF 1,500 per month.

More information

• Discover all Cyber Risk Clinic packs
• A look back at the launch of the Cyber Risk Clinic
• Cyber Risk Clinic website

Your contact

Lionel Ducommun: lducommun@loyco.ch / +41 78 805 16 13