What Is Ransomware?

So you sleep too late this morning, you’re out of your favorite cereal and you spill your coffee on you while it is still piping hot, but don’t worry this is just the least of your worries today.
You finally get to your office and go to open that Word document you have been working on for the past week and surprise it won’t open.
Your stupid and annoying co-worker who drank the last bit of the office coffee before you got in, was ecstatic that he had won a free cruise, surprise it wasn’t a free cruise it was a phishing

A phishing email is an email designed to trick someone into clicking on or downloading a link or giving up login credentials. Once they are let loose they will go in and encrypt important files and documents.
Once they do so you will receive an email from the attacker demanding a ransom usually via Bitcoin often these can be in the thousands of dollars and are unable to be decrypted.
So this all sounds horrible right? Well, there are ways to protect against this and make this already bad morning not quite so bad.
For starters don’t ever open a link from someone you don’t know or one you aren’t expecting. Companies such as Microsoft will NEVER ask for your login credentials via email.

You can also equip yourself with tools to scan your attachments and look for ones that don’t seem to be normal.
You should also make frequent backups of your data either via a physical disk or a secure cloud backup.
PacketPi has the tools and capabilities to help prevent these kinds of attacks and to be there to help you if they do occur. These types of attacks are extremely common in today’s world and they can be in the thousands of dollars.

A question to ask yourself, If you came in tomorrow and everything was broken and your important files were encrypted, Would your business be able to function? Would you be losing money? Would your customers feel abandoned?
PacketPi would like to help you! Fill out the form and we will be in touch very shortly.