Ransomware the hits keep coming going into 2020

By now, we’ve all heard about someone affected by ransomware. If it wasn’t a friend’s business, or a company you do business with, or the town you live in, or the hospital you visit – all you have to do is look at the news to see major enterprises being attacked and ‘taken out’ by this nefarious deed.  As long as people pay, the bad guys will keep using it as a tool. After all, they’re just chasing the money. 

So why do I title this “the good, the bad and the ugly”?  Well, if you’ve been hit, you know the bad part.  It’s expensive in both dollars and perception.  What good can come of ransomware? And besides the rising ransom amount, why is it about to get uglier! 

First, the good part.

It raises awareness that the bad guys are afoot. Wherever there’s profit, fame, political gain and more, there will be someone to play the villain (or hire them) to get the goods. Technology just made it easier. So, the good news is that you know about it!  

Second, the bad part.

Knowledge without action is a travesty. It would be even better if you acted on that knowledge and improved your defenses. Backups and disaster recovery plans are hopefully in place, but don’t assume YOUR backups and DR plans are solid.  Test them occasionally to find the problem before you need a restore. I can’t tell you how many businesses think their backups are solid to find out differently after the attack. 

Internet access should be a privilege, not a right. Virtually nobody should have unfettered access to any website they want. Users should get internet access based on their role in the company, not because they have a computer and a browser. ALL emails and internet access should be filtered, blocked, logged and if needed, analyzed. You need to be current on patches, antivirus, spam filtering, blah blah blah.  Sorry if I lost you there, but we’ve been beating that drum for years.  In fact, you might want to take away the internet from your users – let users surf only on their phones, on the guest wifi and NOT the corporate wifi.  Perhaps provide an internet kiosk that’s separate from the corporate network. 

Lastly, the ugly

The *really* ugly. Once you get ransomed, you can no longer assume that it’ll just lock your files up. That data of yours (oh, customer files, payroll info, vendor lists, etc.)  could have just as easily been copied to the attackers and then encrypted. So now, you don’t have your customer spreadsheet, but the bad guys do!  Imagine the horror when they go to all your clients to tell them you’ve been hacked and they have all this data about YOUR customers! If you are under HIPAA, you might as well close up shop, the HIPAA fines alone will knock a small practice down and out. What customer will solicit a company that not only leaked their information, but that same confidential information was POSTED on FaceBook? The depravity and damage can only be imagined at this time. 

So, if you got ransomed, and all you lost was a few (thousand) bucks, consider yourself lucky. It’s about to get a whole lot uglier.  The cities of Atlanta, Pensacola, and Baltimore will agree! 

Happy New Year to all and may 2020 be brighter, smarter and safer. 

If you liked reading the “Twelfth Day of ECHO” return to our main list to read all of the other “12 Days of ECHO” posts.

Do you have questions or need assistance with your ERP system or data security?  Please feel free to Contact Us and see if we can help get your bits and bytes in order.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Online Transaction Processing vs. Decision Support

So, you’ve got your ERP system up and running, and before long, the management team wants reports, dashboards and executive data out of the system. That makes perfect business sense, and most ERP systems (including Epicor) have a slew of built-in reports as well as a report designer – Epicor E10 uses SSRS, Microsoft’s flagship product for writing reports. 

However, there’s a potential problem. The activity of entering data, called “Online Transaction Processing” or OLTP, is fundamentally different than the activity of reporting and summarizing that data, called “Decision Support”, or DS for short. Before we go further, let me also explain database locking. A lock is a basic database ‘tool’ that prevents other user from changing a piece of data that you are using. There are many types of locks, but for this discussion, a row (record) lock prevents others from editing that specific record– let’s say an invoice.  A table lock prevents anyone from editing anything in that whole table. It is our sincere desire to keep all locks as short as possible, for the longer the lock is held, the more likely it is for someone else to want that locked data. 

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) locks individual records to allow parts to be sold, inventory to be adjusted, and invoices entered. Decision Support (DS) locks whole database tables to run a report. When a manager wants to see an invoice report, nobody can be entering a new invoice while the report is being generated! While most locks are handled automatically, they cause delays and in rare cases of a deadlock, data loss. 

I’m oversimplifying the issue, but the long and short of it is that Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) and Decision Support (DS) fight each other, all day long.  In fact, locking contention is one of the main causes of database performance issues! There are several solutions, but a common one is to simply time the DS to occur after OLTP – that is, after the business closes. Many companies run their reports at night, not only because the system is more available, but all those pesky users aren’t entering data, locking records and causing issues! 

A more complex, but also common solution, is to copy the Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database to a independent Decision Support (DS) database on a regular basis.  OLTP users get an optimized database for their activities, and the DS users can run reports all day long without locking the OLTP users out.  An ideal solution for a busy database, but it does have its downsides. You’ll need twice the disk space and a method to move the data from OLTP to DS.  Our clients use backup & restore, SQL replication, mirroring and all kinds of technology to duplicate the database and prevent the dreaded locking contention. 

Need help? Let us know and we’ll help you get your Online Transaction Processing and Decision Support properly segmented for best performance. 

If you liked reading the “Eleventh Day of ECHO” return to our main list to read all of the other “12 Days of ECHO” posts.

Do you have questions or need assistance with your Epicor system?  Please feel free to Contact Us and see if we can help get your bits and bytes in order.