The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has advised computer users to back up their online data as “one of the best defences against ransomware” and similar cyber attacks.
Assistant Minister for Defence, Andrew Hastie said opportunistic cyber criminals were an ongoing threat to Australian businesses, organisations and families.
“(The) ACSC continues to receive increased reports of ransomware incidents, however, there are simple steps all Australians can take to protect themselves against cyber attacks,” Mr Hastie said.
“Backups are one of the best ways to build resistance against ransomware, making it much harder for cyber criminals to hold Australians to ransom,” he said.
“Regularly backing up your data and keeping it off your network on a USB, or in the cloud, will make it faster and easier to restore your important files if they ever become lost, stolen or compromised.”
Mr Hastie said that in the case of ransomware, it may not be possible to recover data and get businesses or projects back up and running without backups stored offline.
The Assistant Minister said backups were digital copies of valuable information which were saved to external storage devices or to the cloud.
“Your private and personal information – health, financial and valued photos – are at risk if they are not regularly backed up in a safe location,” Mr Hastie said.
The ACSC’s step-by-step guides on creating a backup can be accessed at this PS News link.
