Five Tips to Stop Ransomware from Crippling Your Restaurant’s POS System

ransomware attack

For a restaurant, POS systems are very critical. They contain sales information, accounting management systems and handle inventory. In addition, purchasing, receiving and product transfers among locations is also stored there. These systems also link to information on sales and customer returns, sales trends and costs and profit analysis. Therefore the restaurant must have some backup and disaster recovery mechanism to be on the safer end from Ransomware attacks.

Usually, ransomware is taken as a regular malware attack. This is not true. A malware needs to present on the system for month in order for it to be really deadly but a ransomware only needs minutes to execute and all of the POS systems are brought down, leaving the business to an immediate halt.

Why a ransomware attack on POS systems is a huge deal?

POS systems, known as point of sale system, is place where all your customers make payments for products in your restaurant or store. In other words, every time a customer makes purchase at a restaurant or store it known as a POS transcription. 

Now imagine that your own restaurant’s POS system is attacked by a ransomware. This will not be a regular ransomware attack where if you pay ransom all your data will be back. No, in this attack all your POS will be locked and you would actually pay ransom in order to gain access to them. Unless you do so, all your POS transactions will be stopped and for a restaurant that is the main source of revenue. So you can only imagine the loss it would cost you or any other restaurant owner hit by a ransomware attack on their POS systems.

Apart from profits or revenues your losing your reputation and customers loyalty by portraying the image that your restaurant was vulnerable to an attack and it or a far worse attack can happen again at any time.

Tips

So, what can you do to prevent a ransomware attack on your POS systems? 

Here are some tips which may help:

  1. Work with a security services provider who provides 24/7 monitoring of your system.
  2. Get a software defined branch networking solution to enhance security measures across all your restaurants and maximize threat detection and response at POS System. 
  3. Lock down your POS systems from the rest of the network and implement a cloud based managed firewall to protect your data traffic. 
  4. Deploy a SIEM across the restaurants. This will assist in providing early warnings of cyber-attacks.
  5. Invest in a good cloud backup and recovery solution which would enable you to recover your data in the event of an attack in a matter of minutes as apart from POS, ransomware can infect your data as well. For instance, StoneFly DR365 & DR365V offers such solutions.

Conclusion

These five tips should be observed as a critical cyber security solution. Get a good security service provider that can deliver such technology in an efficient way. With continued ransomware attacks, it is best to also invest in a backup and disaster recovery solution.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *