Are your computers and data protected from all types of Ransomware? Are you aware of all the possible ways a computer can be infected with Ransomware? Clearly the answer to these questions is NO!
There is no way for an average person to know the various types of Ransomware and how they infect your computer, hackers are reinventing this wheel literally every other day!
In this article I will discuss and explain the most effective approach that businesses and individuals alike can take in order to protect their data and protect your business from ransomware.
Now the obvious part is to claim that everyone should have a firewall, antivirus, antispam, intrusion detection/prevention etc… In most cases people do not have enough layers of security on their computers and or networks.
In any event, with evidence that even the largest of corporations today are getting hacked, it is safe to say that having all the layers of security in place is not going to cut it unless you have a complete backup of ALL your data.
43% of Cyber Attacks Still Target Small Business while Ransomware Stays On the Rise.
smallbiztrends.com
Look at it this way it is impossible to prevent all intrusions all the time. At some point your employee might click on a bad attachment or visit a bad website. You can train them, teach them and take every precaution that one can imagine, if you do not have a complete backup of your data you remain always vulnerable.
Without mentioning any names, we recently had a small business with ten (10) employees, they have very good email spam protection by Barracuda, yet a bad PDF attachment made it through. The email was extremely well crafted, almost as if it was a targeted attack.
The attachment appeared to have come from a trusted vendor, one that they have been working with for many years and has been added to their white-list and so naturally it was trusted and thereby opened.
The attachment was a Ransomware that took complete control of the Windows PC and asked for half a bit coin payment (roughly $5500 USD).
The importance and emphasis of the Cloud when speaking about Backup is twofold. Mainly it secures your data even if your office or physical location is vandalized, burglarized as well as damaged or destroyed due to fire, water leaks or other force of nature. Second, if your only backup is on a local USB drive or similar media, when your computer or network is hacked, the hackers almost always look to destroy or prevent you from accessing your local backup media.
By having your backup on the cloud you protect your business even from complete computer take over attacks known as Ransomware.
Luckily this customer is utilizing our Managed IT Support service and has complete Cloud Backup of all their data, which is included with all of our Managed Support service offering.
We simply wiped the hard drive clean, installed a fresh clean Windows 10 Pro and restored all their data.