Ransomware: How It Attacks and What to Do to Avoid This Threat to Personal or Corporate Data

This threat to cybersecurity, increasingly common in today's Internet, can affect both individuals and businesses. What You Need to Know?

The ransomware is a malicious code used to extort money from their victims. When a device is successfully attacked, screen lock malware prevents access to the computer, while cryptographic ransomware encrypts the information hosted there.

Then, the victim receives a ransom message on the screen, or through a text file (message) from the affected folders, where the money is requested to give the user back power over their computer or data. 

Ransomware creators use different attack techniques:

• Diskcoder ransomware: encrypts the entire disk and prevents the user from accessing the operating system.
• Screen locker: locks access to the device screen.
• Crypto-ransomware: Encrypts information stored on the victim's disk.
• PIN locker: attack Android devices and change access codes to lockout users. 

How to protect yourself from ransomware attacks?

For two decades Protegent360 has been helping to preserve the digital world of users. In 1995, the company revolutionized antivirus protection, replacing outdated signature-based malware checking with a new technique called "heuristic recognition." Today, Protegent360 is once again transforming antimalware protection with new technologies that combine "on-premise" and "on the cloud" solutions, providing the most complete protection against Ransomware attacks.

Since the best way to avoid ransomware is still prevention, the Protegent360 Total Security Software provides solutions, recommendations, and good security practices. The basic rules to avoid losing information are:

1. Implement security solutions

The anti-malware solutions Protegent360 Total Security Software protects against all types of malicious code, including the latest variants of Ransowmare as WannCry, NotPetya, Disckcoder, and BadRabbit. The protection modules included in Protegent360 solutions are:

Ransomware Shield - Monitors and evaluates all running applications based on their behavior and reputation. When a suspicious action is detected, the user is asked if they want to block the activity or not.

Cloud-based sandboxing: detects unknown threats by analyzing all samples in a few minutes, providing an additional level of security to the company. The samples are run in full sandboxing that simulates user behavior to fool the evasive tactics of malware.

Protection against network attacks: Protects against vulnerabilities for which there are not yet patches or have not been released.

2. Use a backup and recovery solution

An adequate backup policy guarantees the rapid return of files and databases, avoiding the loss of time and money, and ensuring business continuity. The solution Protegent360 allows backup of an entire system or critical business data, retrieve specific files using filters, store the backups within the organization or save them in the cloud, and define the time and quantity of copies to be kept of the backups.

3. Conduct audits of your systems.

Know the state of the security of the information of the company through complete and personalized diagnosis. 

4. Raise awareness among employees

Given that most cases of infection begin with human error - due to the lack of information on the threat - the education and training of all employees become essential to be prevented and avoid incidents.