Ransomware and Cyber Extortion Are on the Rise – What Can Be Done?

By Thomas B. Caswell and Rory D. Zamansky of Zelle LLP | June 27, 2016

  • June 27, 2016 at 10:27 pm
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    The insurance industry in order to cover data loss should insist and describe proper backup, much as property insurance requires locks and alarm.
    The problem is that there is generally a lack of awareness of what proper backup involves that will protect you from extortion, and that means backups must be insulated, versioned, automated and monitored.
    •Your backups must be insulated through properly configured NAS – Network Attached Storage – or cloud storage, which can be slow to upload and download.
    Many users are not aware that an infected computer can spread the infection to other connected computers, USB attached or ‘mapped’ drives and thumb drives, network file shares or even cloud drives that appear as network drives. Ransomware can delete Windows volume shadow copies (VSS) or System Restore functions you might otherwise deploy.
    •Your backups must be versioned, should you have been saving infected backups, you must be able to go back to before the infection.
    •Your backups must be automated to ensure that they are Current, with monitoring to ensure they are not missed.
    So what to do?
    •Get critical data stored in the cloud with versioning unless there are privacy fears.
    •Go for an enterprise level protection such as Shadow Protect, Veeam, StorageCraft, BackBlaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan and others that could be a bit costly and require a connection upgrade, and speak to your technology consultant who may have some suggestions.

    •Then there are new products like BaQapp, cost from just $299.00, that does offer insulated, versioned, automated and monitored backups that comes with its own NAS and no extra cost for multiple endpoints.



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