How To Protect Yourself From Ransomware – For Free!

Ransomware is prolific, lucrative and on the rise amongst cyber criminals, with dizzying numbers banded about on how many attacks there are, rising exponentially year upon year.

In the most simplistic terms, ransomware takes over your computer and scrambles all your data so that whilst you can ‘see’ it is all there, you cannot read or access it.

For a home computer that may mean you lose access to all of the photos that you have stored on your computer; images of friends, family, pets, holidays, your precious, irreplaceable memories….

For a business it may mean a lot more than not being able to access that data – attackers can also steal your business information, reselling details others will find lucrative. For a home computer it could spell heartache – for a business it could be the end of the road.

Ransomware attacks will only work if you have data stored on your computer that you need – and it isn’t stored anywhere else.

There are two ways in which to prevent such an attack.

The first is your free option.

If you have no data on your computer at all – nothing, nada, zero – then there is nothing for a cyber criminal to either encrypt or to steal. If they have nothing to encrypt or steal, they have nothing to bargain with.

The second way costs money.

You need to ensure that you have adequate security installed on your computer, and your network, and that you have encrypted your data, and that your data is backed up securely, and that you understand the current threats and are therefore able to recognise an attack and prevent it.

Free internet security products are not robust enough to keep you secure; you need to back up your photos and files to an external, secure, encrypted location.

As a business, you need to talk to an experienced IT company, to ask “is my business adequately protected”, not just assume, or hope, that it is. You need to consider becoming Cyber Certified, of taking all available steps to provide your company, and your customers, suppliers, and partners, with the most robust security procedures available.

It is not a question of “if” you will get hit by a cyber-attack, whether you are a home user of a business; it is what will you do when you are hit? Will your photos be recoverable? Will your business survive?