Keeping your computers safe from cyber hackers should be a top priority for your home and business.

Boothill Gallery in Okotoks recently had all of its files stolen and held for ransom, and while police are investigating this should be a lesson to others to make sure your files are safe.

Dave Auton, team lead and senior annalist at Jolee Electronics says the first step should be to make sure your computer software and virus ware is up to date.

"If you are not sure where the email is coming from, don't open it," Auton said. "A lot of these are transmitted via attachments that say invoice or something of that nature, and some people are click happy and they double click on it and it opens and it's too late."

Once you click on it that virus is in your system.

The answer to keeping your data safe is to have more than one backup. So even if that virus propagates onto system or throughout a network we still have a copy in the cloud that it can't get to and within a number of hours we can have a network back up and running."

While traditional anit-virus works, Auton advises to do some homework to see if you need something more.

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