Don’t Let Ransomware Get You Down

While the number of ransomware incidents has remained relatively steady, the costs related to an attack are rising—and exponentially. Now is the time to be proactive with your cybersecurity posture in order to prevent malicious software from compromising your important data.

Estimated read time: 2 minutes

Doctor, man and tired with headache by laptop, anxiety and frustrated in modern office at hospital.

What is Ransomware?

Ransomware is a type of malware threat hackers use to infect computers and encrypt computer files until a ransom is paid. The malicious software makes your data, files and other infected items unusable. Cyber criminals use this method to extract money, and if the ransom is not paid, the victim’s data remains confiscated and potentially destroyed by the hacker.

The problem isn’t just that hackers take over your computer and demand a ransom. It can cause much larger problems once the initial infection has made its way into your computer. The virus will attempt to spread across your files, drives and programs as well as to other computers on your connected network. As you can imagine, it can spiral into a significant problem for your organization very quickly.

Methods to the Madness

There are many ways that hackers and cyber criminals disseminate ransomware. We’ll cover a few of the most common methods here. You’ve likely heard of Phishing Emails where hackers disguise emails to look legitimate, so recipients unknowingly are tricked into opening them. These emails, however, contain malicious files or links and when clicked on or downloaded, deploy malware onto the device. In some more extreme cases, bad actors will infect the user’s email address and then use that email address to further spread the infection. This all typically happens without you even knowing it.

Another tactic that has become more commonplace now that employees can work virtually anywhere is compromising passwords via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Many organizations utilize RDP to give employees access to their computer files and programs over the internet from a remote computer. While this is a feature that has many benefits to employees, it comes with a set of risks; stolen passwords being one of them.

Additionally, hackers often target popular software programs to disseminate malicious files. They begin by becoming well-versed with the software as it is readily available and easy to access due to its common use. Then these bad actors create intricate malicious software that is specific to the program making it very difficult to detect before it is too late.

A Preemptive Approach to Preventing Ransomware

Now that we have covered a few of the more common ways that hackers attack, let’s talk about prevention. Since it’s universally difficult to catch cyber criminals, let’s focus on ways you can take a proactive approach to help protect your business.

Because cyber criminals continually refine their methods for attacking, identifying all the ways they can gain access is difficult. Not to mention, many of these bad actors are actually bots that scour systems to find ways to infect them. Over time, similarly to machine learning, bots are able to quickly get better at outsmarting various cybersecurity measures that exist. As such, no business or individual is ever fully safe from malware, and everyone must take the necessary precautions to prevent unwanted attacks. Here are some of the top tips for minimizing your risk of ransomware infection:

Educate and train your employees regularly.
Enable multi-factor authentication.
Install End Point Detection and Response Anti-virus (EDR).
Process third party patching security updates for software such as Adobe, Java, etc. as they become available.
Install a Security Information and Event Management solution (SIEM).
Regularly back up your computer and your files and store those backups separately.
Keep your personal information and passwords secure. Be sure to change your passwords often.
Use and maintain preventative software programs.
Have a cybersecurity company conduct a vulnerability assessment and network penetration test on an annual basis.
Check back to this list often and perform regular updates to continue to minimize ransomware risks.

If this list feels overwhelming or makes you nervous, don’t panic. This is work that you can outsource to a managed service provider like Hamilton. We have cybersecurity options to protect you and your business. We work with you to determine what measures you already have in place as well as identify areas that we recommend you improve.