It’s just your average Monday morning when you suddenly experience that most terrifying of moments: your once functioning PC has turned zombie.

You hit the keys hoping desperately that it’s just some kind of temporary glitch but all the hoping and praying has done precisely nothing and you have to face the fact that you’ve been hacked.

Wracking your brain to think back if you opened any suspicious emails or links, you slowly calm down and start considering your options. If indeed you have been hacked what should you do?

The answer is plenty and we take a look at eight things you should do right away if you fear the worst has come true and your machine has come under attack.

1. Don’t panic

You could unplug your laptop and hide under your desk or you could deal with the problem in hand and see if there is anything that can be done to retrieve something from the situation.

Seriously, don’t panic. The chances are that you’ll be able to retrieve many of your files; even some is better than nothing right?

If you have external storage you might be in an even better position. So take a few deep breaths and think.

If you are part of a network then it’s time to take one for the team and make sure that no one else on your network becomes infected. Take yourself offline and make sure your network cable and the Wifi are all turned off, right off, as in completely unplugged. Then let the professionals know, like your IT support guys or a computer network service, if your support comes from outside your organisation.

2. The Rescue Operation

If you know what you’re doing, then shut down your machine and start by taking out the hard drive, before any potential virus can do any more damage to it. If you have no idea what the hard drive is, you’re going to have to call in the experts to remove and analyse this for you.

By re-connecting your drive to a virus-free alternative computer you should be able to see what, if anything is saveable.

At the very least, you’ll be able to make sure the hard drive is free from bugs and harmful malware

Then it’s time to try and rescue your data. Anything on this infected drive should be taken off and stored elsewhere, such as cloud data storage, CD or even a new hard drive.

3. Restoring Your Old Drive

Now wipe that drive completely clean, so there are no files, images or videos remaining. Everything you wanted saved has been saved so now it’s just a case of deleting anything and everything that may have caused this virus.

Once your drive is all cleaned up you can reinstall it and try and reboot your infected machine. You will probably need to reinstall a great deal of software but that’s ok if you know the origin of anything you install. Try and use the original CDs rather than copied or borrowed versions.

Naturally, you’ll want to make sure that one of the first things you do is to get your anti-virus software up to date too. Don’t even think about compromising on the quality of this software, so no searching for free versions. If you want the best in virus and malware software, you’re going to have to pay for one of the bigger names. It can be pricey but it’s more than worthwhile to  have this kind of protection at your fingertips.

4. Stop It Happening Again

How did that virus get on there in the first place? It’s likely that the virus wasn’t picked up because your software updates or antivirus wasn’t up to date.

The first thing you’ll need to do is conduct a full scan to make sure nothing harmful remains on your system.

Then change all your passwords. That’s right, all your passwords from your social media to your online banking accounts, they’ve all got to change. If a hacker has got hold of your bank details it won’t be long until you start spotting some suspicious activity. Get hold of your bank right away to tell them what’s happened and ask them to flag up anything they see that looks out of character for you.

When changing your password, make sure that they are complicated and use a variety of numbers, upper and lower case letters and symbols. Don’t make them easy to guess and don’t follow a pattern.

5.  Check All Your Accounts

Your bank might not have been the only account to be affected. If you do a lot of shopping online and visit two or three stores regularly, then check that no addresses have been changed or added on.

Similarly if you’re on social media platforms, then take a few moments to make sure that no dangerous messages have been sent under your name containing harmful links.

Warn contacts that you’ve been hacked and ask them to report any suspicious behavior to the platform in question.

Make sure that no new accounts have been set up in your name by going through your emails.

6. Backup For Future Protection

Hopefully you won’t have to go through another attack like this, but just in case there is a next time, take the time to have all your files backed up and stored somewhere safe.  You could use an online backup system to access your files or a plug in storage device, either way make sure these backups are carried out regularly.

Some hackers are particularly clever and malicious and will set up so called ‘back doors’ which will allow them access back into your system once you’ve detected and gotten rid of the original virus.

You can combat this by making sure everything is how you left it. Check obvious things like your email accounts and make sure that no new rules have been set up forwarding certain messages elsewhere and the same for all your shopping and social media accounts. These changes are huge red flags and will let you know immediately if you’re at risk of future attack.

7. Lock Down Your Apps

An easy step to overlook but go through websites that allow access from other Apps, such as Facebook, and close them all down either by removing them or taking away their permissions to access your account.

That’s not to say that this isn’t a long-winded job, it really is and chances are you might lose your top score on Farmville, but it’s more than worth it.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

8. Take Stock

After all the dust has settled and you’re confident that you’re back up and running without any fear of further attack via a backdoor, then it’s time to take stock and try and figure out what just happened.

Tech experts and business bloggers will all tell you that it’s rare a hacker lets loose chaos for no reason. Almost all of the time there is financial gain involved. So what were they after in your account? If it was just access to your bank account, then that’s one thing but chances are they were looking for far more.

If you run a business then it seems likely they were looking for access to your business accounts and even had in mind ransoming your files to sell back to you at a profit. This ransoming malware is one of the more destructive tactics used by hackers along with Rootware, which targets the basic functioning or ‘roots’ of your system. If you think you’ve been the victim of either of these dangerous attacks then, as expensive as it may be, it’s almost always worth letting the professionals in to carry out damage limitation and get you back on course.

While plundering a business might be one reason, still for others it might be that the hack was a way of gaining access to your contacts to get money out of them and access to their accounts.

Whatever you believe was the reason, now’s the time to think how you intend to beef up your security.

While these attacks are unexpected, shocking and damaging ultimately you are more than likely to find your way through it.

You’re certainly in good company as platforms across the world, including Sony, JP Morgan and LinkedIn have all faced costly hacks despite having some of the heftiest security software in the business. The good news is that for most of us, it simply won’t happen or, if it does, it will be on a scale that’s relatively small and straightforward enough to correct without any lasting damage.

The key to dealing with a hack is to act quickly, shutting down the infected machine as soon as possible and alerting colleagues.  Once that’s done, then get those experts to work cleaning up and making your hard drive as good as new as you prepare to analyse what’s happened.

With this quick thinking hopefully you’ll be able to avoid turning a hacking drama into a crisis.