Tasmanian businesses are being urged to watch out for scammers in the wake of Friday’s major global computer outage, which caused widespread disruption across the state.
While many systems have since returned to normal, experts are warning businesses to be vigilant against fraudsters offering fake help.
“After such an incident, regrettably scammers and criminals look for vulnerable targets to prey upon,” TasICT General Manager Russell Kelly said.
“The best advice is to follow the official information from CrowdStrike and contact a local ICT professional to help ensure your system is back up and running and protected from hackers at the same time.”
The outage primarily affected businesses with a national footprint, with most home computers free of the CrowdStrike software remaining unaffected.
“Come Monday morning, every business and government department could use the outage as a wake-up call for how they are prioritising business resiliency and continuity and ensuring they are prepared for interruptions from events such as these,” Kelly said.
“It goes to show how important the digital economy is to Tasmania, how many businesses, government services and public information services rely upon it.”
“No doubt the timing of Friday afternoon saved us from a much more severe outage.”
