What is Ransomware? 3 Ways You Can Stay Safe From It.

Ransomware: A heated topic earlier this year in 2017, still as relevant today. What does ransomware do? Ransomware is a special type of malware specifically designed to encrypt and hold your data for a price – typically payable in Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, or other types of anonymous forms of payment. Once this malware strikes, typically in the form of an email attachment, word document, or excel spreadsheet, ransomware works to make sure you can never see your files / folders again unless you pay the ransom.

There are many ways to stop this attack from happening in the first place. We’ll give you 3 free ways to help prevent ransomware right now, so you can take a nice breather.

First, ransomware typically comes in the form of an email. If the sender looks suspicious, or the email contains an attachment you were not planning on receiving – discard it. Typically hackers inject ransomware in emails titled, “Invoice due”, or “Action required” – it’s an easy target for a human to click on, as we are emotionally inclined to resolve a conflict or pending issue.

Second, keep your products / operating system up to date. Make sure you are on the latest version of Office – if you have Office 365, you are OK – as this product updates frequently and is adaptive to patch ransomware intrusion methods. Always keep you Windows PC and your MAC up to date! Don’t turn off updates. You’d be surprised, but many forms of ransomware take advantage of old, dated hacking methods. Patch and keep up to date!

Third, have a backup. A last case scenario, but we cannot stress this enough! Plenty of products in the market. Windows has a local one built in, Mac has Time Machine. Use something! Best case is to take whatever is important to you and make sure it is offsite and disconnected. Ransomware tends to spread invasively, so it is critical you have at least one backup method that is offsite. A good one to use is Awesomebox (Wink, wink)!

Anyways, hope this article helps. If you enjoyed this, share it with your friends and family. Let’s stop ransomware, together.

For those looking more in depth, follow our Hitchhiker’s Guide to Ransomware.