What Ransomware Means for Data Protection in Businesses

If you had to make a list of the most pressing digital threats that businesses face in today's modern environment, ransomware would undoubtedly be right at the top. In a ransomware attack, a host computer is infected by a malicious piece of software similar to a regular computer virus. The dastardly twist, however, is that all files on the user's hard drive are encrypted and are essentially held for "ransom" by the attacker - users can only regain access after paying a hefty fee and even then resuming normal operations is not a guarantee.

As with most tech-related subjects, ransomware continues to evolve and grow more dangerous with each passing day. When developing a business data protection plan for your organization, ransomware needs to play a key role for a number of important reasons.

The Key to Protection Involves Remaining Proactive

Experts agree that one of the single best ways to mitigate the impact of a successful ransomware attack is to make sure that an effective backup plan is in place before your business becomes a victim at all. Because ransomware relies on an attacker's ability to block you from your own files, having backup copies of those files in place essentially gives you the option of wiping a hard drive and starting from scratch without losing anything of value.

The key, however, is that backups need to not only be encrypted themselves, but must be stored on a secure, off-site location. If a ransomware attack encrypts your entire network, the backups themselves may become compromised. Likewise, backups will need to be resilient enough and will need to be kept as up to date as possible for this method of recovery to be successful.

It Isn't Just Your Hard Drive That You Have to Be Concerned With

For the last few years, ransomware attacks have essentially had one basic target: your hard drive. That quickly evolved into network attached storage, which itself seems to have given way to a bold new venue: your website. Recently, several strains of ransomware have hit the Internet that actually target websites instead of hard drives, going after Web servers with the same ferocity that business users feared in terms of their personal computers.

Typically, the main entry point for this type of attack is through vulnerable plugins and third-party software. If you're planning on installing a new shopping cart program on your website to start a new eCommerce revenue stream, make sure you know exactly where that shopping cart program is coming from so that you don't find yourself the victim of the type of attack that cost businesses more than $18 million in June of 2016 alone.