Ransomware is a kind of double humiliation for IT departments. A malicious software gets into a system, blocks access to the victim’s data, and in most cases threatens to erase or publish that data if a ransom is not paid.
This scenario can luckily be protected against in a number of ways. Although this phenomenon has been around for about a decade, it is more recently being employed against those with connected systems and larger numbers of connections.
One example is the public library and its 700 computers in St. Louis, Missouri. Although a solution was found for the information which had been compromised, their systems were down for weeks. No company needs this kind of aggravation and loss of time and potential profits.
As the current largest threat to cyber security, ransomware attacks must be prevented. Employ these top strategies to keep your information and reputation intact.
Try cloud-based security solutions
When you employ a strategy using the cloud and network-based security to protect against ransomware attacks, you are keeping the threat outside of a virtual electric fence. Inside the fence, your system is secure while anything hitting the perimeter points can be dealt with before vulnerabilities are created and ransomware has a chance to penetrate.
Your IT transformation can start by employing security measures in the cloud far in front of your vital information. Cloud-based security provides many features that make it a good solution for preventing ransomware. Within the cloud system, you can also use a secondary protection layer, which is known as cloud-based storage.
Cloud-based storage
If your network's defenses are hacked into even through the cloud-based security solutions, having your storage based in the cloud means that your information is away from the system to which hackers may have gained access. Your information is backed up into the cloud and safely away where you will not lose it.
Therefore threats of disabling your systems affect your company less because you have full copies with which to restore everything the hacker may have attempted to take away. It is not a primary defense, but cloud-based storage is an excellent failsafe, much the same way computer administrators once made disc copies of important files and kept them in storage in case of system crashes.
Cloud-based security and storage implementation
You will need to employ a cloud-based security and storage transformation in three steps. First, you will want to know about advanced security features available to you via the cloud and ensure that your IT department is using them for maximum effect. There are several layers of security available via the cloud which also protects against other attacks including DDOS attacks.
Second, expect your disaster-recovery capacity to increase dramatically and take advantage of the backup recovery options available to you when you are using the cloud for storage.
Finally, don't forget to train all users on the new system. Fortunately, there are many resources for helping employees become more comfortable with new cloud security and storage strategies.
How to use cloud-based security against ransomware
Because it is a networked software solution existing outside of your physical computers and company network, cloud-based platforms work well as adaptable security tools which can be easily changed and updated according to your needs. This means that a solution to ransomware attacks that works today may be updated to reflect new and different attempts in the future with a few keystrokes or lines of computer code.
You can keep up with changing forms of ransomware attacks and increase security as your organization grows. This is becoming a common way for data-sensitive industries such as healthcare to keep important information safe and private.
