An increasing number of businesses and organizations are getting hit by ransomware attacks. Hospitals, schools, social networks...sometimes it seems as if hackers are raking in millions of dollars from every direction. Globally, it sums up to billions of dollars.
A ransomware attack is devious in its simplicity. Usually, a phishing email or download is used to trick a user into opening the malicious file. This file contains malware, which encrypts your data immediately and requests money in return for the password.
No payment = no password = no data.
In 2020 alone, the FBI reports more than $20 billion was sent to hackers, despite the fact that all of the target businesses had backups that could be reverted without paying any money. The figure here was just for US payments, and it only accounts for reported cases. Last year it was only $11 billion.
Do backups really help?
In some cases, backup solutions fail and data cannot be recovered. There are several reasons why the solution might have failed over time, especially if it was used for years and never replaced.
There may also be cases where the target business has a backup that can be restored, but doesn't contain everything it needs to fully recover.
The final reason so many businesses are forced to pay the ransom is: the ransomware attack affects their entire system, including attached and synchronized offsite/cloud backups.
A backup that is also encrypted by the ransomware cannot be used for data recovery and the only alternative is to pay or lose the data forever.
Each day spent trying to recover the data drains valuable business resources, resulting in massive revenue losses.
To defend against malware, you need to block it before it infects the first workstation, and then to implement an extensive backup strategy for all workstations and servers.
Contact us today to find out how we can help secure your business against ransomware.