How to Defend yourself from Ransomware

This short post will teach you what ransomware is and how to protect yourself.

Indeed in recent times users, both at home and at work, are often receiving more and more phishing emails containing ransomware. It could happen that some users may accidentally activate the virus and, as a consequence, especially their colleagues at work will be seriously impacted.

Also check : Everything you need to know about Anonymous

Generally delivered as an email attachment or downloaded from malicious and/or social websites, ransomware is a type of computer virus. It could be masked as a document (e.g. a late invoice) or as a useful program.

And once it is executed, ransomware quickly encrypts all user documents, both on the computer and on network drives. Then a ransom is asked in exchange for decrypting the files, otherwise if the user does not have a recent backup the files are lost forever.

At work, IT support should setup a wide array of technical measures and procedures, including regular backups (and you may also want to backup your files at home) to defend against ransomware. By the way these measures are not enough when done alone. The most effective defense against ransomware is safe user behaviour and awareness.

You can follow these simple rules to protect yourself and your colleagues from ransomware, since you don’t want to be the weakest link!:

• Be suspicious with any email received from outside your company
• Carefully examine emails before taking any action.Were you waiting for that email? Were you already discussing that topic with your contact? Ask the person it came from if they actually sent it
• Carefully examine URLs and file extensions before opening them
• DO NOT click links or download attachments in suspicious emails
• DO NOT download attachments from your personal mailbox (e.g. Gmail) on computers at work