• Secure West Cyber Surya
• July 22, 2026
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Ransomware is the cyber threat most likely to put an Australian small or medium business out of action. One wrong click and every file on your network — quotes, invoices, client records, job photos — is encrypted, with a demand for payment to get them back. Attacks on WA businesses aren’t hypothetical: the ACSC consistently ranks ransomware among the most damaging cybercrimes reported by Australian organisations, and recovery routinely costs far more than any ransom.

The good news is that ransomware is largely preventable — and survivable — if you prepare before it happens.

How Ransomware Gets In

The overwhelming majority of infections start one of three ways: a phishing email with a malicious link or attachment, a stolen or weak password on remote access (email, VPN, remote desktop), or an unpatched vulnerability in software exposed to the internet. Notice what’s missing: Hollywood-style hacking. Attackers use the easy doors, which means closing the easy doors gets you most of the protection.

Five Defences That Actually Stop Ransomware

• Offline or immutable backups. Backups that ransomware can’t reach and encrypt are your ultimate safety net. Test the restore quarterly — a backup that doesn’t restore is not a backup.
• Multi-factor authentication on everything remote. Email, VPN, remote desktop, cloud apps. This single control blocks most of the account-takeover attacks that lead to ransomware.
• Patch fast. Prioritise anything internet-facing. Attackers scan for newly announced vulnerabilities within days — sometimes hours.
• Endpoint detection and response (EDR). Modern EDR tools spot and kill ransomware behaviour (mass file encryption) before it spreads. Traditional antivirus alone is no longer enough.
• Train your people. Regular, practical phishing awareness turns your staff from the weakest link into an early-warning system.

If You’re Hit: The First 24 Hours

1. Isolate. Disconnect affected machines from the network and Wi-Fi immediately — don’t switch them off, as memory can hold forensic evidence. 2. Call for help. Engage an incident response team early; the first hours determine how bad this gets. 3. Don’t rush to pay. Payment doesn’t guarantee recovery, may be illegal depending on who you’re paying, and funds the next attack. 4. Report it. Report to the ACSC via ReportCyber, and note that Australian businesses with $3 million+ turnover now have mandatory ransomware payment reporting obligations. 5. Preserve evidence for insurance, regulators and police.

Recovery and Coming Back Stronger

Real recovery means restoring from clean backups, finding and closing the way the attackers got in, resetting credentials, and hardening the environment so it doesn’t happen twice. A tested business continuity and disaster recovery plan is the difference between days of downtime and weeks.

Secure West Cyber Technologies provides 24/7 incident response and ransomware-resilience assessments for Perth and WA businesses. If you’d like an honest read on how your business would hold up against a ransomware attack — before you have to find out the hard way — get in touch.