It was a typical Monday at Doceo. Support calls were arriving steadily on the help desk line. Then, a call was forwarded to me. It was the church Secretary of a small church and her voice was quivering. She arrived at the church office that morning and turned on the church’s computer to enter the tithes and offerings received during the morning service the previous Sunday.

After a lengthy boot process, ‘Delores*’ saw a bright, red screen with bold, white letters. The screen read, “Your Computer has been Infected with Ransomware! Do Not Turn Off!” Delores did not know what to do.

She frantically called the Pastor. She read the entire message on the screen to him. The message stated that all the files on the computer were now encrypted and the only way to decrypt the files was by paying the equivalent of $15,000 in the electronic currency known as Bitcoin.

The Pastor and Delores decided they would power off the computer and try again. However, the message appeared again and again each time the computer was powered off and powered on. The Pastor then recommended Delores call the volunteer in the church who set up the donated computer many years ago. Unsure what to do, the volunteer recommended Delores call Doceo to see if I could help. We provide IT Services to the company where the volunteer works.

After further discussion with Delores it was discovered that the church was using QuickBooks for their church accounting and giving record keeping for many years. It was also discovered that Delores was never instructed by the volunteer to back up the QuickBooks data and take it off-site. Years of accounting data and giving records were lost.

There is no better time than now for all churches and ministry organizations to confirm they have rotational backups of critical church records in place. These backups should be secured and stored off-site. Smaller organizations can simply and inexpensively back up to multiple USB thumb drives. These thumb drives should always be stored off-site with the pastor, treasurer or church secretary.

Larger organizations may want to consider a backup appliance such as Datto. Nightly backups are made to the local Datto appliance then uploaded to the cloud overnight. The Datto service also provides virtualized servers and workstations in the event of a disaster such as a fire or water damage at the church.

No matter which backup solution you choose, backups should be tested frequently to confirm that the data is being backed up and able to be restored successfully.

*The actual name of the church secretary was changed to “Delores” so that she and the church can remain anonymous. Doceo works with many churches and ministries throughout Pennsylvania and Maryland.