Over the last 12 to 18 months, undoubtedly you’ve heard of the two major ransomware attacks in WannaCry and NotPetya. As the ransomware threat continues to grow, many customer’s ask – how can I protect myself from ransomware?
A proper ransomware protection strategy requires a multi-stage approach:
- Education: Education is the first and most essential protection of your business from ransomware. It’s extremely important that your staff understand what ransomware is and the threat that it poses. It helps to provide your team with examples of suspicious emails with clear instructions on what to do if they encounter something similar (i.e. don’t open attachments, report it to your IT support, etc.).
- Security: Antivirus software should be considered the absolute minimum for any business to protect against ransomware (let alone other risks!). Ensure your software is up to date and you have an active and current subscription. Keep all business applications updated to minimize any vulnerabilities these may pose.
- Backup: Modern data protection and disaster recovery solutions take snapshot-based, incremental backups as frequently as every five minutes to create a series of recovery points. If your business suffers a ransomware attack, technology like this allows you to recover to a point before the ransomware infection occurred – avoiding the need to pay the ransom to get your data back, and avoiding any risk of there being anything “left over” from a manual cleanup.
Taking adequate precautions is the best way to protect yourself from any form of ransomware or virus. In the event you’re attacked, the best way to avoid paying a ransom is to have a proper backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solution with up-to-date backups. This will allow you to restore your environment to a point in time before encryption and retain your data.