Ransomware Destroying Businesses; How Do You Stop It?

You come into work Monday morning after a wonderful weekend with the family

and are ready to start the week off with a bang. Meetings scheduled, appointments set, clients to contact, but first you need to get through any important e-mails you may have missed after a few days away. A few invites for meetings, a proposal was sent back and signed, and a package is coming from Fed Ex. The attachment in this e-mail lets you know when the package is to arrive, better open that, right? Wrong. If you did, there

is a good chance you just infected your whole network with Ransomware.

 

Ransomware, or CryptoLocker virus, was just introduced to your network and is going through your shared files at a rate of more than a thousand per second. When the virus has run its’ course through your network, encrypting all of your files you receive a nice screen like this:

 

 

1) You can take the chance of paying the ransom and cross your fingers that this cybercriminal will give you back your data. This is a risky move and one we at WatchPoint do not suggest. Can you really trust that a cybercriminal is going to do as they have promised? They have already hacked your network; do you think they are so ethical that they are going to do as they say? We have seen many cases where even if you wanted to pay, you couldn't. The offenders payment system gets shut down.  The decryption tool doesn't work or was never even built.  Or, best of all you pay, and they ask for more. Hey, if you are going to pony up the cash once you are going to do it again, right?

2) In my opinion, your best option; restore from back-up. Hopefully, you have made a wise investment in a solid back-up company that stores your data off site. This can get you back up and running in anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks depending on how severe the loss of data was and how it was stored.

3) You can recreate all of your data. If you don't have a solid back-up of your data and do not like the idea of paying off criminals, your only other option is to recreate all that data. This sounds like a fun idea, doesn't it?

 

 

-Ransomware will cost businesses $1 billion in 2016. - FBI

-There has been a 66% increase in malicious emails in first quarter (Q1) of 2016

-Malicious emails have increased 800% in Q1-2016 compared to Q1 2015

-Antivirus is only 47% effective

-New threats are created at a rate of 3.5 per second

-Phishing campaigns are 45% successful