How to Protect Your Business from Cyber Extortion

How to Protect Your Business from Cyber Extortion

A relatively new type of malicious computer program known as “ransomware” has become a global epidemic affecting businesses of all sizes.

This fast-spreading threat has grown so quickly that it’s become a $5 billion industry according to estimates by cybersecurity experts. As several high-profile attacks this year have demonstrated, not even small businesses are immune.

But don’t let the headlines fool you; there are plenty of things that Dallas-area businesses can do to steer clear of ransomware.

Prepare for the Worst

The problem with most cybersecurity solutions is that they’re reactive rather than proactive; as such, they often don’t provide adequate defense against previously unknown threats. In the case of ransomware, the most important step you can ever take is to ensure you have a recently updated data backup and disaster recovery strategy in place. Ideally, one that keeps a copy of your digital information and business-critical systems stored somewhere other than your office.

Because ransomware makes your data indecipherable to anyone but the criminal who created it, your files and apps are essentially inaccessible until you pay the ransom. Of course, there’s no guarantee the hacker will follow through on his or her promise to return your data.

If your backups are stored on the office network, they will almost certainly fall victim to the infectious nature of ransomware. However, if you have up-to-date backups offsite, the easiest thing to do is wipe the infected machines and restore the most recent backup.

Preventative Measures

Although it’s extremely important to prepare for the worst with a disaster recovery strategy, business owners also need to put into place preventative measures that minimize the risk of computers and servers becoming infected in the first place.

There are a few complex technology solutions to help in this respect, but there’s no substitute for employee education. In fact, raising staff awareness is easily the most powerful weapon in your cybersecurity arsenal. Be sure that your team has a basic understanding of ransomware risks and scams so they can report them.

In addition to preying on human trust and gullibility, ransomware can also be designed to exploit vulnerabilities in operating systems and other software. WannaCry, for example, infected machines running Windows XP that hadn’t been updated in several months. This version of Windows is so old that Microsoft doesn’t even release updates for it any more!

So as far as preventative measures go, train your employees to avoid suspicious links and emails, and install software updates as frequently as possible. Beyond that, you’ll need experienced IT help to manage a firewall and antimalware solutions.

Don’t Pay the Ransom

On a final note, this cannot be stressed enough: Never pay the ransom. After all, you cannot exactly trust cybercriminals to be honest people willing to hand over the keys to your files once you’ve made a payment.

Paying also gives the criminals an incentive to develop even more dangerous ransomware. Although protecting future victims may not be your priority as a business, you should look at it from another perspective – you could be the next victim all over again. After all, if you’ve paid a ransom once, there’s a good chance that criminals will consider you a more valuable target than those who didn’t pay.

Qoverage helps protect your systems against cyberattacks such as malware by providing you with a robust data backup solution. Call us today to find out more about our backup and disaster recovery services.