Colombia. After Brazil, Colombia is the country most affected in Latin America by a type of information hijacking: the Crysis Ransomware, a virus that infects companies' servers and locks personal files. To retrieve insider information, such as customer histories and transactions, entities and companies must pay hackers a reward. That's what Juan Ospina, general manager of the computer security company I-Fort and speaker at the next edition of the International Security Fair, which will be held from August 16 to 18 in Corferias.
According to Ospina, who will give a talk on enterprise cybersecurity on Thursday, August 17 at the fair, the Crysis Ransomware is a simple form of crime to operate. Through a malicious virus, criminals seize the database of a computer and demand, by means of an image that appears on the screen, a payment in bitcoins to return access to the information. "They usually ask for low-amount rewards: between $1 million or $2 million. They are interested in the process being quick to avoid the investigation of the authorities," explains Ospina.
The problem is growing due to the low level of reporting that exists in cybersecurity in Colombia. Most of the information about attacks on the network, according to the expert, comes from the surveys that security companies (those that offer antivirus and Fireworks) carry out to their customers. Another factor is that less than 40% of the companies that manufacture a product have evaluated their risks for cyberattacks.
According to a study by Osterman Research Center Security, the health and financial sectors have been the most affected in the United States by the hijacking of information. Likewise, it reveals that Ransomware is the cyberattack modality that increased the most in 2016. For Ospina, the great trigger of this crime is bitcoin, since "payments with virtual currency are made to anonymous accounts, to which it is very difficult to trace the country of origin and the holder."
Finally, some recommendations to counter this virus are to acquire good quality antivirus and fireworks and create backups of documents and save them on an external disk.
