Good Post on Ransomware
How to beat ransomware: prevent, don’t react, from MalwarebytesLabs.
The one thing I would add to this article is further emphasis on backup. I can’t emphasize it enough. No matter how attentive you are, you cannot absolutely be certain that you won’t get hit by ransomware. You can be careful, but most people use their computers because they have work to do, and they don’t want to be constantly thinking about security.
So you need backups. Underline, no, double-underline and bold, what the article said about an offline backup. Another alternative here is a multi-generational backup such as Carbonite, but it’s a good idea to have a complete system backup that is not connected to the computer. One of my clients was infected by ransomware and even ignored some of the early signs. In the end, the thing that saved their files was Carbonite. In some cases, it will take time for old system images and restore points to be corrupted. I was able to recover some of their material from those, but I would have been able to recover much more if I had been notified earlier.
Which goes right back to being attentive. Here are a couple of points I try to make to everyone.
- Know what anti-virus software you use, know what it’s icon/logo looks like. Check it regularly. Make sure that you scan regularly and do second opinion scans.
- As soon as your computer does something you think is strange, scan. You can scan in the background. In most cases, a scan is very unobtrusive. If in doubt, check.
- Check your backups. Make sure your backups are actually taking place.
Read the MalwarebytesLabs article. It has good material. Malwarebytes is a good anti-virus solution, and if you’re using something else as primary, their free version is a good second opinion scanner.
