Pay Me 1 Billion Dollars

Yet another wave of ransomware attacks were reported today and that got me to thinking about the best way to truly combat malware.  It is not through some sophisticated AI-driven anti-malware program or next generation cyber-defense shield.  Rather it is through the use of traditional tools in an upfront preparatory manner.

On my Windows machine, I have Office 365, an Adobe Subscription and then easy-to-install tools such as Evernote, Slack and iTunes.  For other applications, such as QuickBooks and MalwareBytes, I have offline copies sitting on an external hard drive.  I also have all of my files sitting on either Google Drive or DropBox Enterprise and I back up the entire system with SugarSync.

Just yesterday I got a new computer after my old one crashed and I was up and running inside of 2 hours.  My old one literally stopped responding to input – very much like a ransomware attack.  I chose my online backup options as they all provide version control so even if the current files are encrypted to lock me out, an “older” version is still there to override the latest files.

Thus if I were to be ransomware-attacked, I would simply wipe the drive(s) on my computer, reinstall the few options I just mentioned and I would be back up and running in no time.  Now I might reach out for support to prevent the attack from occurring again (which is why I like MalwareBytes so much – especially their pre-boot inspection option) but that would be the extent of my efforts.  And those efforts, despite the propaganda saying otherwise, is all you need to defeat these ransomware attacks!