Ransomware attacks are becoming more prevalent and end users within small-to-medium business segment and education are particularly susceptible. It is for this reason that Redstor has embarked on an online campaign to raise awareness around the severity of this security issue and what is the best way to protect assets.
In a three-day customer survey taken late 2016 in the UK, Redstor found that over 100 end-users, within the last six to eight weeks, had to recover from ransomware attacks.
Victims were mainly from schools and small-to-medium businesses and enterprises, and, according to Redstor the education industry showed the highest ransomware infection rates in 2016.
Schools are particularly easy to target currently because students and staff all have mobile phones that are brought to the academic institutions.
Ransomware like Fusob and Small are locker-ransomware types that lock access to your device and apps. Crypto-ransomware types are not as successful on phones because Android systems back up into the cloud and users therefore are less likely to pay the ransom because they can restore their data from their backups.
Danie Marais, Director of Redstor, says: “Ransomware has been around for over a decade, although it was not until 2013 that ransomware become big news with the arrival of Cryptolocker. Ransomware strains all have commonalities; they make your data inaccessible through encryption. To regain access, you will have to pay a ransom within a set time period.”
Redstor’s campaign is based primarily on education and awareness, with the principle being the more end users are informed, the better they can protect themselves.
As Redstor explains data protection is an important step in the fight against ransomware and to successfully protect against it, it is critical to understand where it comes from and how it can infect us.
Threats and key factors to consider include spam mail, infected drives, trojan horses and compromised webpages.
“The main advice we offer the market is to back up all data, outside of your own Local Area Network (LAN). Be sure to use a reputable cloud backup software provider. It is important that you have the ability to recover an entire system and that your backup is isolated from your network to keep it safe from the infection,” Marais explains.
