Last week the University of Calgary had their computer system taken hostage by cyber criminals.

The University eventually paid a $20,000 ransom to get a decryption key from the crooks and unlock their systems.

David Swan is a cyber security expert from Vulcan.

He says this is a problem that could have, and should have been prevented.

"Other universities, for example, the University of New Brunswick has a guy named David Shipley, who is their tech boss. He forecasted this in Calgary on March 1, at the Cyber Security Summit West. The folks who were at that conference listened. But the U of C didn't listen."

Swan, a military intelligence veteran and Naval Officer, is the Executive Vice President, Defence Intelligence Group for CSCSS/Centre for Strategic Cyberspace & Security Science, who's job is to sniff out cyber threats.

He says the likely suspects are Russian criminal groups, who he says have generated more than a billion dollars in stolen revenue.

Many of us may look at that and say, they're a big entity that would be a target for a cyber attack because of their deep pockets.

And while you wouldn't be wrong in that assumption, Swan says if you assume they won't come after you, you'd be wrong.

"There are localized attacks that get right down to the community level, to the Mom and Pop shops. It doesn't matter if you're in real estate, running a restaurant, a retail outlet, somebody will, if they can figure out how to ransom your businesses, lock it up or get inside and transfer money out of it, somebody's going to try."

He says you're best line of defence is to always back up your data on a separate drive, and always check for critical and security updates from your operating systems manufacturer.

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