Medical billing and recording company crosses paths with ransomware

Employees: 35
Employees: Port Charlotte, FL

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The situation

  • A spear phishing attack targeted a Florida-based medical services company.
  • An employee clicked a link in the malicious email and a virus infected the network file share on the server.
  • The virus encrypted the primary data shares on the server.
  • The data was made inaccessible, and employees could not access billing information or client records.
  • The entire company was completely shut down and unable to operate.

The major implications:

  • The hackers requested the company to pay a ransom fee to regain access to their data.
  • Besides paying the ransom fee, there was no other way to decrypt files encrypted by ransomware.
  • Full recovery without paying the ransom fee would have required a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan.
  • In some cases, ransomware can also affect local backup solutions.
  • The company’s backup solution was limited, and the most viable backup of their data was more than a week old — which resulted in thousands of lost dollars.

Next steps:

  • The medical company contacted Entech to implement and better manage a new backup and disaster recovery solution.
  • With Entech’s Managed Disaster Recovery tools and a custom-tailored backup plan, the company’s new business continuity methodology ensured that backups are running every 15 minutes and replicated offsite.
  • The company’s new solution can recover data quickly and limit data loss to 30 minutes or less.

Analysis of potential costs:

Option 1
Paying the Cryptolocker ransom fee: $82,000

  • There’s no guarantee the hacker won’t attack you again.
  • There’s no guarantee you’ll actually get your data back.

Option 2
Basic recovery with standard backup tools

  • The average recovery time using standard backup tools is 24 business hours.
  • The average cost of recovery is $41,760.

Option 3
Entech Managed Disaster Recovery

  • The average recovery time is 3 business hours
  • The average cost of recovery is $5,220.

The takeaway

By leveraging Entech’s Managed Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Solution, an organization can avoid the harsh negative consequences of a ransomware attack. More specifically, a company won’t need to pay a large ransom fee, risk reputation damage, or experience days or even weeks of downtime. Instead, an organization protected by Entech can remain fully confident in its backup solution and ability to recover after a data loss incident.