Michael Hiltzik: A ransomware attack cost this entrepreneur a year of his life and almost wrecked his business
When ransomware bandits struck his business last June, encrypting all his data and operational software and sending him a skull-and-crossbones image and an email address to learn the price he would have to pay to restore it all, Fran Finnegan thought it would take him weeks to restore everything to its pre-hack condition.
It took him more than a year.
Finnegan's service, SEC Info, went back online July 18. The intervening year was one of brutal 12-hour days, seven days a week, and the expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars (and the loss of much more in subscriber payments while the site was down).
He had to buy two new high-capacity computers, or servers, and wait for his vendor, Dell, to master a post-pandemic computer chip shortage.
Meanwhile, subscribers, who had been paying up to $180 a year for his service, were falling away.
Finnegan estimates that as many as half his subscribers may have canceled their accounts, leaving him with a six-figure loss in income
