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HOW TO PROTECT AGAINST RANSOMWARE
Shut the door on internet threats.
There are many ways to protect ourselves against ransomware as no one method can fully protect us. Lets us uncover many ways to keep our data safe and protected.
What action can you take ?
- Update software and operating system with the latest patches since they are the target of most attacks. Patches are often called bugfixes or bug fixes that are designed to update, fix, or improve systems.
- Back up data regularly either in a hard disk or cloud, thus you can wipe your devices free and reinstall the files from backup. this way you do not need to inhere to the ransom.
-However, you have to secure your backups and make sure is not accessible for modification or deletion from system. Ransomware does also look out of backups to lock them. Therefore backup systems that do not allow direct access to backup files.
What tools / implementation can help protect my data and my devices?
- Consider using antivirus and firewall software on your device or a Virtual Private Network service that allows you to connect to the internet securely by keeping your exchanges private.
- When setting up your home wireless network, use Wi-Fi Protected Accessed 3 (WPA3) encryption, since all other wireless encryption methods are outdated making it more vulnerable to exploitation.
- Enable strong spam filters to prevent suspicious emails from reaching the end users. It analyses your content, email address, header, attachment and even language. Moreover, known spammers will be black-listed and so spam filters will check emails against them too.
- Scan all incoming and outgoing emails to detect threats and filter executable files from reaching end users.
- Configure firewalls to block access to known malicious IP addresses. Block traffic to and from address that are consider malicious.
How to further protect yourself:
- Creating a strong password consisting of four or more random words grouped together and add character
- Consider using password manager application as it helps manage different accounts and passwords while identifying weak or repeated passwords. Look for the application with one million users and accompanied by positive ratings and reviews.
- Use multi factor authentication as it is more secured since it requires three types of credentials, password, token, ID, facial recognition and biometric fingerprint. Thus, making it hard for a threat actor to compromise your device.
- Use given security questions properly by giving confidential information about yourself but avoid putting the answers in the social media for privacy, protection and security.
- Choose secured network and trusted internet connect (home WIFI) but beware of public network as they might not be fully secured, making it easy for others to intercept your data.
Tips on how to verify a email:
- If an unknown source has sent an email, do not open it but delete it instead.
- Established companies will never send us any zip folders or password. Thus, the email could contain malware. So, it is crucial to ensure that the email address is valid before clicking it.
- If an email seems like it is from user-interface companies (e.g., banks and airlines), despite not having done any business with them recently, it is most likely to be a malware. Thus, always ensure that the email address is legitimate and inspect it before clicking it.
- When a known source sends us an email which we are unsure of, contact the sender to verify if it's a legitimate email before opening it. Since the sender’s address book could have a virus attached to it, which is being sent out to everyone.
- When an email has link attachments, it would be underlined in blue. However, if we are not expecting the link, we should not click on it since it could also contain the ransomware.
Tips on how to verify a site:
- When performing google search, links are annotated with small icons next to them to indicates whether the websites are harmful or not. The dangerous websites that have been identified would be marked in red and we will be blocked from accessing that website unless we have disallowed the default settings.
- Secondly, if you directly type in a website and mistyped the URL, which unfortunately turns out to be a malicious website, then there are high chances that the installed plug-in/ extension will recommend us to not navigate the website.
- Thus, to prevent getting ransomware from the website, we should make an informed decision and avoid taking the risks of browsing that website. Especially when we are warned about ‘known malicious’ websites beforehand.
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