Preventing Cyber Attacks in Your ECEC Centre

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Over the last couple of years criminals have been developing ransomware which is a computer virus that blocks access to the data stored on your PC until a ransom is paid. This is incredibly disruptive and creates an administrative nightmare.

The latest version of ransomware which attacked businesses globally over the weekend is WannaCry. This malware is spread via unwanted email that contain requests for invoice payments, promises of tax rebates and numerous other standard lures. All these emails contain an innocent looking .zip attachment which is actually a disguised executable file that once clicked will infect the PC with the WannaCry ransomware.

From this point on the PC is no longer accessible by you and will perform only two tasks; encrypting your files and propagating WannaCry to other locally connected PC’s until you pay the bitcoin based ransom.

So how can you prevent WannaCry and other ransomware viruses from infecting the PC’s at your ECEC centre:

  1. Ensure all your PC’s are using the latest operating system from Microsoft, Windows 10, and that the operating system has recently been updated. This is achieved by regularly turning PC’s off or restarting them.
  2. If you receive suspicious emails or emails from unknown senders, do not open the email or any attached files, instead delete and empty the item from your inbox and thrash.
  3. Do not use any USB that you are unfamiliar with as they may be infected.
  4. If you have critical data on any of your centres PC’s, please ensure you have a backup to either a cloud based solution such as Microsoft’s OneDrive or to a standalone hard drive.
  5. If you are browsing the web and encounter a sight which has a lot of pop-up windows, close your browser, clear the cache on your browser and start a new browsing session.

A longer term solution to the scourge of computer viruses and malware specifically is to use a cloud based solution such as Office 365 from Microsoft. This solution provides services such as email and a document management solution that store all your data and documents in a backed up offsite facility utilising the latest virus defences and continually managed by Microsoft.

If you are interested in implementing Microsoft Office 365 within your ECEC centre/s please contact us at enquiry@cloudbridge.com.au or on 0409 268 648. Cloudbridge have developed a Document Management Framework specifically for the ECEC sector that is based on the NQF and we have assisted a number of centres in implementing Office 365. Further details on our Childcare Document Storage Framework can be found at https://www.cloudbridge.com.au/document-management/.