Are you aware of Ransomware?

Recently in the news they have been speaking about Travelex banks that have had to halt their currency service after a recent cyber-attack.
This attack has resulted in high street banks stopping customers ordering foreign currency, the hacker demanded Travelex £4.6 million to get all customer data back.
The real question is are you aware of ransomware, do you know what you need to do?
Ransomware is a malicious computer virus that threatens to destroy your files or your reputation, unless you pay the requested fee. Some examples encrypt or scramble your photos, videos and documents and they will only get decrypted if you pay a ransom. There are many different thing that the hacker will accuse you of for example, downloading pornography or looking at illegal images and threaten to email this to your contacts. Usually the hackers give you a deadline to pay and if you don’t pay in time the ransom goes up.
It isn’t necessarily the case that the hacker has gained access to the pc, more often than not its just someone trying to scare you and get you to pay some money. However, there is also a chance the scam is real and they really do encrypt your files.
But how do you get your files back? You can either back up your data or you will have to cave into their demands, but there is no guarantee that if you pay the money that you will get your files back and that you wont get infected again.
We suggest that you don’t open any suspicious attachments or links in emails, keep your device up to date with all software updates required, ensure you have a robust security solution in place that can help prevent these attacks and most importantly ensuring your data is backed up regularly because at least then if the worst comes to the worst you have a copy of your data.
If you think you have been effected by this or something similar and you are concerned about your network please don’t hesitate to contact us and we can offer a network health check.




