Smaller businesses must disconnect their internet connection in the event of a cyber attack and report it to the authorities. These are some of the recommendations in a new emergency plan that the Danish Agency for Social Security has drawn up together with the police.
- Danish business is facing a serious cyber threat together with the rest of Denmark, says Minister of Emergency Situations Torsten Schack Pedersen in a press release.
The emergency plan is aimed particularly at small and medium-sized businesses without an IT security department. The plan is for the guide to be used by companies before and during a cyberattack.
Specifically, the agency advises companies to disconnect the internet connection, contact management and a possible IT manager, call a possible IT supplier, communicate the attack to employees and report the cyberattack to the police.
The guide comes after Danish services and websites have recently been hit by cyberattacks and IT problems.
Most recently, the pro-Russian hacker group NoName057 (16) has launched attacks against Danish websites with so-called dDoS attacks. A dDoS attack occurs by overloading websites with a massive amount of data traffic, so that they are shut down and become inaccessible.
- We clearly demonstrate in our own way the consequences of ignoring cybersecurity, the group wrote, followed by a devil emoji, in a post on the messaging service Telegram.
Advantages and disadvantages of pulling the plug
The guide can't help much with these attacks, says IT security expert at the Danish Engineering Association IDA Jørn Guldberg.
- It's pure harassment, but the guide can help if you're attacked with a virus, he says.
Here, turning off the internet can limit the extent of the damage, but not stop the problem completely.
- It can prevent a virus from spreading to multiple devices, he says.
But you also have to make up for what you lose by turning off the connection. His most important advice is that as a company you regularly make sure to take backup copies of your content.
He says that hackers will particularly be looking for accounting systems and customer databases. That is why he also believes that tradesmen are among the companies that can benefit most from the agency's new guide.
Earlier in November, Motor magazine reported that sensitive personal information on a number of Danish car dealerships' customers had been exposed in a cyberattack. Here, hackers had attacked the IT company DocuBizz, whose software solution is used by most Danish car dealers.
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