Anicet Mbida 06:52, December 08, 2022

Anicet Mbida delivers to us every morning what is best in terms of innovation.

This Thursday, he is interested in an incredible computer attack in Switzerland which prevents payment of the salaries of employees of nearly 50,000 SMEs.

Cyberattacks are currently paralyzing hospitals in France.

But on the other side of the Alps, in Switzerland, nearly 50,000 SMEs can no longer pay salaries because of a computer attack.

It feels like cyberattacks only happen to other people.

That they mainly target industrial giants like Renault a few years ago.

Or the most fragile public services such as hospitals.

However, in Switzerland, tens of thousands of small businesses with little history, small traders, have found themselves collateral victims of a cyberattack.

It all started at the end of November with a computer attack against Infopro.ch, an online service host.

To avoid contagion, he was forced to shut down his servers.

However, it turns out that among them, there were those of Winbiz, a management and accounting software used by nearly 50,000 SMEs in Switzerland.

Result: WinBiz has become completely inaccessible.

All of its customers found themselves stranded, unable to issue the slightest invoice, the slightest purchase order.

To access the customer file and even to pay their employees.

You imagine ?

At the end of the month, in a busy period, the holiday season, the period when we close the charts of accounts… In short, this created a tsunami in the country.

It was late November.

Since then, is it over or not?

No not yet.

WinBiz was forced to move its IT to another platform.

But about a third of his clients are still stuck, forced to go back to paper/pencil/stamp.

Problem: most don't even know how to do it without a computer tool.

Again, this doesn't just happen to others.

Anyone can find themselves victim or collateral victim of a cyberattack.

What can we do then?

We could protect ourselves, but how can we guarantee that others are too?

We can't and that's the problem.

Hence the interest for all: SMEs, large companies, service providers, employees... Everyone must be aware of the challenges of cybersecurity.

We are increasingly dependent on computer software.

The slightest failure can have very concrete consequences on our daily lives, on our pay slips.

Thousands of Swiss companies are currently experiencing this bitterly.