RansomWare: Is your Business Safe?

With data flowing in and out of networks with greater volume and enhanced speeds than ever before, cybersecurity professionals are posed with a serious issue. Within the data, there could be ’malware’ waiting and ready to strike on individuals’ and business’ private information.

Malware itself has become increasingly difficult to prevent.

What is Ransomware?

All Businesses can be targeted by Ransomware.

Ransomware locks your computer and its files preventing access to them. In order to get access to your files, a ransom payment is demanded. Ransomware continuously evolves and adapts as new defenses and software are developed to combat it.

Small business can be targets of cybercriminals just as big businesses. Only 31% of small businesses take active measures to protect their companies from malicious attacks. The average cost of a small business security breach is approximately $36,000. In 2016, there was over $1 billion paid in ransom (which was reported). The actual amount paid out must be higher to account for those unreported.

Businesses need to protect themselves with next gen, multilayered, adaptive security solutions to detect threats that increase with time. Without proper protection from ransomware, malware attacks could become more prevalent.

Best Practices to Guard Against Attacks

1. Keep your data backed up. It is important to keep data backed up to the Cloud or to an off-site location. Also, if you are not backing up to the Cloud, but are backing up to a local storage or server, keep them offline when not in use, not directly connected to the desktop systems so that way the backup is not susceptible to being breached.

2. Do not click on suspicious emails, links, or attachments. The primary method of infection, includes being spammed with multiple emails, in a phishing attack. This is where multiple emails attempt to get a user to click on a malicious attachment or click on an URL that will allow malware to infect your workstation.
3. Disconnect. If you do happen to get infected with ransomware, immediately shutdown and disconnect all Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. Doing so, will decrease the likelihood of the infection spreading via these methods.