| | December 20168CIOReviewFight Back Against Digital Extortion By Eugene Kaspersky, Chairman & CEO, Kaspersky LabThe world is facing a rising and increasingly dangerous tide of ransomware. It basically comes in two forms. First, there are `blockers'­malware that blocks access to a computer's file system. Second, there are `cryptors'­malware that encrypts data stored on a computer or mobile device. Our statistics show that the number of attacks by blockers is declining. Attacks by cryptors on the other hand are skyrocketing­with something like a 550 percent increase in 2016 compared to the previous 12 months. The problem lies in the fact that modern encryption­if done well­is practically impossible to crack.Several years ago, criminals used to target predominantly individuals, but that's no longer the case. For many businesses, losing access to their data is just unthinkable: they're fully paralyzed without it; and so they choose to pay the ransom. Several police forces around the world, including in the US, have paid ransoms to criminals to get access to their files back. Criminals have even attacked a number of hospitals and forced them to pay to be able to continue their operations after a serious disruption.Modern security software can provide a very high level of protection against ransomware. High-quality products are able to intercept the overwhelming majority of attacks and rollback modifications of files in case an attack gets past the defenses. But unfortunately not everyone uses such products, so the number of victims is still on the up. Of course, ideally you should never pay criminals if your data is encrypted by ransomware. That's all very well in theory, but when it's your family photos or business documents encrypted by criminals, the theory can swiftly go out the window. But paying the ransom means supporting this criminal business model; and besides, there's never a guarantee you'll receive the decryption key anyway: the crooks may just disappear with your ransom money. Still, understandably, the prospect of losing precious documents (say, a dissertation draft that needs to be submitted next week) forces many ransomware victims to just give in and pay up.It's always better to try and prevent a ransomware incident than to deal with the consequences of one that's occurred. That means using quality security software. It's also always a good idea to have a fresh backup­preferably offline, since some malware of this kind tries to encrypt any backups it can find as OPINIONIN MYEugene Kaspersky
< Page 7 | Page 9 >