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The Hillcrest Country Club was recently attacked by a ransomware malware from cryptovirology.

They are currently working with the authorities, insurance, F.B.I. and also a third-party ransomware specialist recovery company to help them through this process. Charles Moll with IT Village One said on Saturday morning's KWON Tech Talk program that the Hillcrest Country Club may experience woes from this occurrence for some time. He said ransomware will lock all files, starting with the text files, which are configured files.

Once the ransomware gets into the server and the business' work station, they cannot function anymore. Moll said he has worked on cases like this with 12 other businesses locally. He said the best practice a business can do is to put back-up servers in place because it will protect important files. The servers can be taken back to their previous state after a ransomware attack, but the files would have to be rebuilt if there is no backup server.

Catching things after the fact may be too late. Moll said you have to catch the ransomware as soon as it happens in order to combat the attack properly.

Charles Miller with NBR Electronics said 99.1-percent of cyber-attacks start with a spear phishing email. He said these types are emails that are directed at certain people at a place of employment that attempt to get them to open it because there is an "urgent issue" that needs to be addressed. If you experience something like this, you are asked to not open the email.

For example, a spear phishing email may target someone in a lead role. Moll said if you are in the lead role for purchasing at your business, you may see an email that says you have not paid a bill that you need to pay right away. Anxieties and worries might creep in and you might want to make sure you did not miss something important, so you open the email. Once the email is opened, the ransomware will storm into your business' server system.

Sometimes you will get calls from the hackers that want into your system. Miller and Moll said they may pretend to be an employee with Apple, HP, or Microsoft when they are not. They said all they do is attempt to create a sense of urgency and get you to act.

Acting could very well lead you into a ransomware trap. Miller and Moll said major companies said they are not going to contact you directly through your computer or your phone if there is an issue.

Last week, Hillcrest Country Club sent out the following release to members:

"We will be mailing out a DUES ONLY manual statement on Monday, this statement will only show your dues charges. Once our system is back online, we will then be able to bill you for any January services ....We currently are unable to process any auto draft payments and ask that all payments be made with a personal check. If for some reason you do not receive your statement in the mail in the next 4 days or so, please stop by the office and we will print one off for you. Also please continue to call us, as our email system is still down."

We will have more on this story when it becomes available.