10 Ways to Protect Yourself from Ransomware

Use of the malicious software referred to as ransomware is the fastest-growing form of cybercrime in the world, costing government agencies and businesses up to billions of dollars each year. Unfortunately for the victims of this crime, the ransom is only part of the expense, with data decryption, system restoration and downtime ranging from hours to weeks multiplying the cumulative cost to the organization. There may also be regulatory fines and penalties and legal fees resulting from information breaches that result in identity theft and fraud.

Cyberattacks are difficult to protect against or detect before it is too late. In addition, criminals are continually creating more sophisticated ransomware, funded by each successful attack they orchestrate.

The important thing is to prepare in advance for when – not if – your organization becomes a victim of ransomware. Don’t wait until it’s too late to protect your data.

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As you map out important plans for your cybersecurity, reach out to the Digital Transformation Team at Applied Software to help you identify tools like Panzura that will best serve your needs.

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You can boost your resilience to ransomware and other malware in the following ways:

1. Periodically educate employees on how to avoid falling victim to phishing attempts.
2. Be prepared to react immediately in case of ransomware attack.
3. Rely on one authoritative data source globally and one view over your entire file network.
4. Use a resilient file system that requires no additional backup.
5. Make sure your data is replicated by cloud providers for resiliency. Mirror data across different cloud providers’ cloud object stores.
6. Use a platform where changes made throughout your file network are stored in the cloud as new immutable data blocks (Write Once Read Many) – every minute is optimal. Even better is additional protection by read-only snapshots.

7. Choose a platform that promises a recovery point objective of 60 seconds for individual files, folders or the entire file network in the event of a malware attack.
8. Have the same enterprise-grade file performance for every user in every location.
9. Safeguard applications like Revit, Civil 3D and Solidworks that are used in multiple locations and prone to latency.
10. Look for the ideal of military-grade data encryption with FIPS-140-2 certification for data protection.

There are multiple platforms that might suit your business needs for ransomware protection. One of the more notable and effective among them is Panzura. With Panzura you may never need to worry about ransomware again.

Beyond protecting your data from ransomware attack, Panzura enables you to replace legacy storage with a modern, resilient, simplified solution. Legacy applications can be rewritten for a cloud environment. Unstructured data can also be made available to machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to drive actionable insights.

Using Panzura, you can benefit from a smart approach to unstructured data, making massive files immediately available to users across distance. Your remote teams can work collaboratively, even on mega-sized media or gaming files, when data updates are immediately visible to users wherever they are located.

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