Protecting Your Business from Ransomware

 The growth of cybercrime means that more and more businesses are suffering from a loss of data, operational interruptions and the associated costs. In fact figures from the Office for National Statistics have shown that there were around 5.6 million incidents of fraud and cybercrime in the UK last year. Now, criminals are finding smarter ways to monetize cyber-attacks, and with our reliance on the internet, ransomware is too becoming harder for businesses to protect against.

 But what is ransomware?

First introduced in 1989, ransomware is a malware that holds data ransom until the owner pays up for it. Today there are many different types of ransomware attacks using different techniques to blackmail businesses, sometimes creating devastating effects.

Improving your IT security is a key way to minimise the likelihood of ransomware attacks and fighting against them. Being proactive by making sure that a few security measures are in place, is necessary for businesses of all sizes and could save you hundreds, or thousands of pounds or more.

How can you best defend yourself against ransomware attacks?

In order to protect yourself against these cyber-attacks, it’s important to keep all your data secured with a few measures, which can be consistently maintained by a reliable IT provider:

• Keep your data backed up: backing up your data will protect you if loss occurs. If you are using an external storage device take it out of the computer once you have backed up your data. This way a ransomware won’t be able to get at the backup if it infects the computer.

• Install and update your company antivirus: ensure that all options are enabled, including tamper protection. Antivirus will curb malicious software before it can install, or help to prevent it spreading.

• Get whitelisting software: using whitelisting software can help to prevent against ransomware attacks by allowing only specified programs to run on staff computers, to stop malware.

• Restrict administrative rights: You might want to prevent users from downloading and installing certain applications or accessing certain company data to reduce the threat of malware being installed.

• Keep your employees aware: making your team aware of the impact of ransomware and how it can be avoided is one of the best things you can do to prevent ransomware attacks. Ensuring that they do not open spam emails or attachments, and limiting what work-related information is put on social media, will improve your IT security.

What to do if you ARE attacked by ransomware

Never pay the ransom requested. Instead consult a professional who might be able to help you recover your data. We provide specialist IT security services to help businesses protect their important data, and prevent and manage ransomware. To find out how we can help you, simply call us on 01252 235 235 or contact the Net Technical Solutions team here