Ransomware attacks have beome a grave threat to businesses across the world. Cybercriminals use data encrypting ransomware to hold a companies data hostage until a ransom of hundreds or several thousand dollars has been paid. Since a majority of ransomware attacks are delivered to your end users in email, it's important to educate your end users of the danger that ranomware poses and what they can do to help protect the company from ransomware. Here is a short letter you can email your employees to inform them of the dangers of ransomware.
Dear End User,
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts company files and holds them for ransom. Ransoms typically range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Cybercriminals made over one billion dollars last year from businesses attacked by ransomware and because cybercriminals have learned how to monetize attacks; their frequency and severity of attacks will continue to grow exponentially.
You should be aware that most ransomware attacks come in the form of an email attachment so please exercise extreme caution when opening email attachments. Never open an attachment in an email you were not expecting to receive or when you do not recognize the sender. You should use the same caution when presented with URLs that you do not recognize or that came from an unknown sender.
With today's advanced ransomware techniques, you only have to visit a website to become infected with ransomware. Let me make that clear. You DO NOT have to click on anything on the website to infect the company with data encrypting ransomware.
In 2017 alone:
- Ransomware emails spiked 6,000%
- 40% of all spam email had ransomware
- 59% of infections came from email
- 92% of surveyed IT firms reported attacks on their clients
These numbers are scary but important for you to know. As an employee of (company ABC), you are our first line of defense against ransomware. Please follow the best practices as outlined in this email to ensure that you do your part to keep ransomware off the company network. Failure to do so could result in significant downtime and monetary cost to (company ABC) and we all need to be vigilant in stopping these attacks.
If you have further questions about ransomware and how you can help prevent it from infecting (company ABC)'s network; please reach out to support@companyabc.com or call the helpdesk at 1-555-555-5555.
Thank you,
IT Department
