According to Systematic, 2016 has been designated as the 'Year of Ransomware' due to the enormous growth in ransom thieving.
With no sign of this stopping anytime soon, companies must look at how to protect their most valuable asset, their data. Until now, Ransomware has seen an increase of 500% from the previous year. With the new year right around the corner, we must stop ourselves and think, what is to come in 2017?
There are some very good defense systems out there for protecting your business assets. Just like the Patriot Missile System protects our country’s interests, businesses can have the best-in-class protection from Ransomware and Malware attacks. (Patriot is a long-range, all-altitude, all-weather air defense system to counter tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and advanced aircraft)
At Micro Doctor IT, we have a secret weapon. MDI Cloudcare, which is our proprietary software agent that prevents your employees from accidently clicking on a bad link, opening an attachment or inviting an attack into your network.
Today's hackers know firewalls, data encryption, virus scanners and other network protection systems have become more difficult to crack. That's why they're relying more on the human error to get into your company. Hackers are targeting an unsuspecting employee to respond through clicking on a link; either through an email or while browsing legitimate websites.
Ransomware is a growing multi-million dollar industry that is using your innocent employees to infiltrate your network by sending very deceptively crafted emails that look legitimate in an attempt to get 1 employee to click on the attachment or link.
Symantec also recently released a study the if a phishing attempt is sent to just 10 employees there is a 90% chance that one of them will click on it.
As the number of employees grows the odds that one of you employees attached to your server will click on that link.
What is the answer to the problem?
Better employee training? Sure that will help, but can all your employee’s be trained at once? What about the summer intern or the remote workers, when do they get trained? Studies also show that if the email is especially well crafted and targeted and uses some inside information like sending the email from a website you just purchased something from (Zappos.com, Walmart, Amazon, Netflix, etc.) and a UPS email with a link to your tracking info pops up, so obviously, most people don't think twice about that. The new term “Spear Phishing” is being used for these new level of deceptive emails. Just like fisherman target a fish and throw a spear directly at it, hackers are targeting your employees and what they do online, and "throwing a spear" at them with a faulty email. How do they do this? With all the information available in your browsing history, Facebook posts and cookies (read more about cookies here), the hackers can use personal information in the spear phishing attempts to raise the click rate much higher that 10%.
So what to you do? Get your secret weapon! We install MDI Cloudcare on every PC and make a slight adjustment in your firewall and immediately your employees are protected from clicking on a link or from opening an attachment. How? MDI Cloudcare blocks the encryption channels, signatures and destination IP.
MDI Cloudcare features:
1: Blocks access to known malware sites
2: Blocks execution of known virus signatures
3: Creates rollback points to allow easy recovery
4: Blocks communication channels to the dark web like ”TOR” (see definition of TOR Network at the bottom of this article)
5: Tracks employee web history for historical analysis
6: Secures access to server drives if infection is detected
7: Very affordable starting at $20.00 per month for 1 to 10 PC’s (not $20.00 per PC, $20 per month for up to 10 pc’s)
7 steps every business needs to take to protect itself, it's reputation and it's data:
1: Install a Business Class firewall like Sonicwall and set-up it up with all the protection recommended by Sonicwall to prevent Crypto (a type of ransomware)
2: Install a local professional anti-virus program on all servers and workstations in the office and make sure they are being monitored
3: Install a local professional anti-spyware program to sweep the network and look for adware, cookies and potentially unwanted programs (ie:SpyKiller)
4: Install a Cloud Level anti-virus, such as MDI Cloudcare cloud anti-virus agent. It prevents accidental drive-by infections from hacked or malicious websites
5: Secure access to the windows servers as described above and turn on Sonicwall’s GEO IP filtering by country to block brute force password attempts (see this article to read more on these attempts)
6: Have an IT Policy for your employees on what they are allowed to do on a company supplied computer and internet connection
7: Hold a training class on Ransomware, Phishing, Vishing, Smishing, Faked Emails asking your employee to wire money to you or commonly called Wire Transfer Email Fraud
If you don’t know how to protect yourself align yourself with an IT firm that has the experience and best practices to protect you from Ransomware. We are running a special offer for any company in northeast Ohio or Western Pennsylvania to have one of our IT specialists come in and present an employee training class on how to protect your company from these threats. The class is completely free if schedule before the end of the year and can be a 30 or 60-minute presentation with Q&A for all your employees.
Contact Info@microdoctor.com for more info or call 330-984-0154 for urgent requests.
By: Mark Richmond, CEO
https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber
Tor is (The Tor network disguises your identity by moving your traffic across different Tor servers, and encrypting that traffic so it isn't traced back to you. Anyone who tries would see traffic coming from random nodes on the Tor network, rather than your computer.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)