Ransomware attacks surge 40% globally in Q3 (Source)

What do you imagine when you hear the word “ransom”?

Probably, a threat-note from a criminal, like you see in the movies, right?

However, ransomware attacks are sometimes not what they seem. They are in the disguise of legitimate files, making headway to your personal computer or mobile device.

Ransomware and cyber attacks are recently making headlines with massive attacks that genuinely impacted several organizations and government agencies across the country. Around 18,000 organizations were having malicious codes in their networks, and 50 of them suffered major breaches. (source)

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What are the five important facts about ransomware?

1. Your systems can be easily infected, but not detected.

Hackers are experts in manipulating the detection programs of the organizations. They can easily infect and control targets by using by sending small payloads with little to no command.

Let’s make it simpler.

Victims either receive an email or a malicious link, which is sent to create a backdoor on their systems through susceptible software.

Cybercriminals easily target businesses or organizations with a ransom demand in exchange for the user being able to recover their data. And once the ransom is paid, you are on their hotlist. They know you’ll pay again, and the risk of them being identified is significantly lower as compared to crimes like credit card theft.

Cryptocurrencies make ransomware untraceable. Even the tech experts have fallen into the trap of ransomware attacks.

2. Question for you: Has your anti-virus software solution got you covered?

For hackers, it is just a piece of cake to evade detection from even the most advanced and know anti-virus solutions. Basically, ransomware targets stored files in your document folders.

So, even if you have an anti-virus solution, there are chances that the ransomware might sneak past the software. As the solution looks for known signatures and blocks them, but what about the ones that are in disguise?

Even your anti-virus has updates to detect the ransomware, there are fewer chances of recovering the files. However, anti-virus solutions are efficient in ransomware prevention is known attacks, so they are a must for your agency’s overall security plan.

3. Backup your files as a last resort.

Now when organizations take backups of their files, they tend to not take it seriously and feel it is an add-on task, thereby, taking shortcuts, but only storing important files or not testing whether the backup files are working. Worse, backups are taken on network drives by some organizations, which can be easily encrypted by ransomware.

In absence of a proper backup strategy, the recovery process becomes tedious with multiple data types, files, and endpoints to recover. Then the companies feel it’s easier to pay the ransom and get data for immediate file recovery.

4. Adopt a well-rounded protection approach.

Use multilayer protection before your data gets infected. You can prevent ransomware at various stages of infection with different protection mechanisms located at different places of your system. You can prevent known attacks with the help of anti-bots, anti-virus, anti-spam, and anti-phishing solutions.

Have protection on the endpoint. If you miss an attack on the network, you can prevent it while it reaches the object of the attack. This is the best way to prevent cyberattacks at all levels. Fill in the gaps of your security system by adding a protection layer on every defense.

While it’s a great approach, anti-ransomware comes to the rescue for unknown threats.

5. Yes, there are anti-ransomware solutions!

Any anti-ransomware solution should have the following characteristics:

• Ability to detect suspicious behavior
• Prevent attacks
• Recovery approach

Some other features that an anti-ransomware solution must have are impact modes. For example, it may be great to secure your system but cause your PC to run slowly. Now, every anti-ransomware tool might not give 100% results, as they too will protect against particular types of ransomware attacks.

However, a great anti-ransomware tool will protect your system against all types of ransomware attacks. It should monitor the encryption process and remediate the encryption based on a local copy.