The catastrophic business of ransomware has proven to be a lucrative crime industry. Over time, law enforcement units have detected and brought down operators of these crime organizations. A wide variety of malware attacks in the past have been related to workers’ poor safety practices that expose them to falling victim to phishing which can eventually result in a ransomware attack.
Ransomware attacks are taking a toll on organizations around the world because the victim companies aren’t as prepared for it as they should be. Studies are finding that ransom demands are increasing at an exponential rate. In some cases, more than $40 million is being demanded of companies in order to regain access to their own files.
Here are a few practices to follow to ensure a safer organization.
- Never pay the demanded ransom. Whenever you pay the ransom that is being demanded, it only encourages the criminals by financing their behavior. There is also no guarantee that when you pay the ransom that you will recover your files. Often, criminals will treat ransomware attacks as a two-for-one special as they will demand ransomware under the guise of returning the files, but they will also sell the data on the dark web, too.
- Keep backups of your files every day. If your company were to fall victim to ransomware, you could easily bypass the need to interact with the criminals by restoring your files from a previous backup.
- When responding to an e-mail, unsolicited phone call, SMS or text messaging, do not offer any personal information. Phishers will attempt to trick people into malware installation which the criminal then uses to obtain information for IT attacks.
- It is important to maintain a good firewall and to update the security tools automatically when they are available.
- Emails that are received should be screened for known threats and as well as block any form of attachment which is deemed to pose a danger.
- To avoid infection by malware, frequent patches to compromised applications are needed. Ensure that automatic updates are enabled to prevent missing a patch.
- If you are traveling, warn your IT department in advance, especially if you use public wireless internet. Using a virtual private network (VPN) will help hide your network activity.
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Call us now for a no obligation proposal at 844-411-LIBERTY (844-411-5423).