I got hacked on my emails yesterday. I didn't think I did anything wrong, didn't think I clicked a link that I shouldn't have; all of a sudden, I started to get messages, WhatsApps, and emails from people saying they couldn't open the link or thinking it was spam, or telling me I'd been hacked and I had.
So, first of all, I'm sorry if you received a link and didn't know what it was or if you clicked on it and it caused you trouble; it seems there was very little we could do to stop this.
As of last year, we have an IT director in the practice - Stuart Reekie, a long-term friend and cinema club partner. Stuart is an expert in all of this and has been protecting us more and more since he joined. We're heading towards Cyber Essentials, which is a big ticket for a company like us, and we had 317 attacks in the week prior to me being hacked. Interestingly, in those 317 attacks, my email wasn't attacked, but Stuart gets reports every week on what's happening and how they're trying to get us (terrifying when you get to look at it).
And so in it comes, bang, click, spyware, everybody or lots of people in your inbox get emailed, and so the virus continues. At least on this occasion, we weren't shut down by cyber hackers, but that's something that's probably in the post for lots of people.
If you think it's not coming to a dental practice near you soon, then just have a look at this video that Seth Godin posted on his blog recently; you think you can tell everything that's going on, you think you understand, and you can see it but you can't and even if you can now, you won't for long.
Different strategies and different levels of resilience are required.
Let's all get together and make it harder for people like this to get at us.
Blog Post Number - 4199