Totally Bitching Encyrption

Day One of a five day series written for the layman

When the media reports yet another data breach, are you like an antelope? Are you watching in horror as a tiger takes one of your friends by the neck? Are you thanking the antelope gods, it is not you in the tiger’s jaws? Are you thinking ‘if it were me what could I do to protect myself?’ Is your mind devoid of reassuring answers?

Firewalls, the dark web, bitcoin, ransomware attacks, zero-day attacks, data encryption, phishing, spear phishing, does it make your head spin? You did not set up your company to be a cybersecurity expert.

The following week will provide guidance on how you begin to turn from prey to predator. Surprise that tiger with your ability to fire a heavy calibre weapon.

Let us start with the hope-engendering time in which the tiger closed its jaws around the antelopes’ throat and yet the antelope escaped. The tiger last seen, like Shere Khan, his’ tail aflame and running for the horizon

This was the time the civil servant left his laptop on the six fifteen train from Waterloo and escaped the sack, because… his data was encrypted.