What is a cyber attack?

a cyber-attack is an attempt by hackers to cause damage a computer network or system. I remember when i used to work in a governmental sector, a cyber-attack hit the computer system. It's a cyber-attack that hit around 15 government agencies and authorities and it's called " Shamoon". In fact, that was a second wave of the attack ( on 2016) the first was back on 2012. 

the cyber-attack was so strong it hits the system as a whole, even the attendance fingerprint. Shamoon wipes data and takes control of the computer’s boot record, which prevents the PC from being turned back on." (Smith,2017)

the impact was so harsh on the business. i remember the system immediately was down after the attack and the business stopped suddenly. No one can do anything because everything in my organization was on the system. all the clients were coming to us and we could not do anything. The business was shut down for a whole week or two. Since it's governmental sector, there is not a lot of cost accrued regarding the organization accrued because the ministry of finance is the one responsible for the whole costs of the organization but doing nothing for the business for the whole week or two of course there are costs comes with it. What the organization did to prevent those type of attacks is to have a full back up to the system so once anything strange happens it can move to the backup system and the business would go on. I believe the most important thing to do if i was a manager, i would prevent any external email coming in or out to all employees emails unless the employees gets an authorization for it after verifying the email and making sure it's clean. 

Reference:

Smith, & Smith. (2017, January 24). Saudi Arabia again hit with disk-wiping malware Shamoon 2. Retrieved from https://www.csoonline.com/article/3161146/security/saudi-arabia-again-hit-with-disk-wiping-malware-shamoon-2.html