A hacker has deleted Romania’s entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt, paralysing the country’s real estate market. The attacker, operating under the handle ByteToBreach, breached Romania’s National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI), stole data, and when the agency refused to pay, wiped the lot. Notaries can no longer record property transactions and citizens cannot obtain proof of ownership. Between 150,000 and 170,000 properties change hands annually in Romania — all of that has stopped.

This is what a destructive cyberattack looks like, and it’s the scenario most Australian businesses aren’t planning for. The common assumption is that attacks are about data theft — someone steals your information and sells it. But wiping data is increasingly common when extortion fails, and recovery is far harder. We see this pattern across the SMB environments we manage in Sydney and Central West NSW: businesses that back up their Microsoft 365 mailboxes but haven’t thought about whether their line-of-business applications — their POS system, practice management software, or donor CRM — have independent backups at all. Many SaaS platforms don’t include backup in their standard terms, and the data is only as safe as the vendor’s own security posture.

Ask one question of every critical system your business runs: if that platform’s database was deleted tomorrow, what is your recovery path? If the answer is “the vendor handles it,” verify that in writing. For platforms like Xero, MYOB, or industry-specific SaaS tools, independent backup solutions exist — and they’re cheap relative to the cost of rebuilding from scratch. If you’re not sure where you stand, an IT provider can run a backup audit in a couple of hours.

All IT Services helps businesses across Sydney, Central West NSW, Brisbane, and Melbourne assess and shore up their backup and disaster recovery strategies. If you haven’t reviewed yours recently, get in touch.