Your safety: the rise of ransomware and how to protect yourself
New data released this week suggests crimes involving ransomware are on the rise, and it’s not just businesses that are being targeted.
Most ransomware infections threaten computer users with destruction of data if they don’t pay a ransom to the criminals who unleashed the ransomware.
According to the online security company Enigma Software, ransomware infections in the US made up a bigger chunk of infections in April than in any other month on record.
The company says ransomware infections in April more than doubled the total from March, and that ransomware made up a larger percentage of overall infections in April than in any other month in the last three years.
Big businesses, hospitals and government institutions have traditionally been the primary targets of ransomware creators, but the experts say that’s changing. “It’s not just businesses that are being hit by ransomware,” said Enigma Software spokesperson Ryan Gerding. “Every day thousands and thousands of people turn on their personal computers only to find their most precious photos and other files have been locked up by bad guys.”
Gerding says the best defense against ransomware is a three pronged approach:
Regularly back up your data to an external device or to the cloud. That way, if you do get a ransomware infection, you can simply restore your data to the last time you saved it rather than paying the ransom or losing the files altogether.
Make sure all of your operating system and anti-virus/anti-malware programs are set to update automatically.
Think about that link. Almost all of the ransomware infections attacking individual computers come because someone got tricked into clicking on a link: either in a bogus email, a hijacked social media account, or somewhere else online.
Another thing to keep in mind, the company says, is that once ransomware is on a computer and the files have been encrypted, there is almost no way to un-encrypt the files without paying the ransom. The best option there is to simply restore the computer using a data backup.
