How to Prevent Ransomware Attacks from Happening to You

In a world of evolving threats, the size of the threat dataset is both large and constantly changing. Since we are all working together to combat against cyberattacks, we need to leverage collective intelligence to help us keep pace with threats. In the past few months, the increase of ransomware attacks has escalated.

The reality is that most businesses often falsely feel “protected” simply because they have not yet been attacked. However, another reality is that 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses and 60% of those businesses attacked by cybercriminals end up going out of business. Taking the right steps to keep your data and business safer is crucial – now more than ever!

You know the saying the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago? Let’s work together to ensure your organization is protected. When is the last time you took a backup of your business solutions and restored it to ensure it’s valid? Do you keep a backup off site?

Below are some of the tools you can put in place to protect your organization – connect with us today to find out more!

Four Ways to Protect Your Organization

1. Move all servers to Azure

• With Microsoft Azure you will have a secure foundation, built-in security controls and the Microsoft Intelligence Security Graph.

2. Activate Microsoft Multifactor Authentication (MFA) on all Accounts

• While Multifactor Authentication can’t prevent phishing emails from being clicked, it can prevent successful phishing attacks from turning into a ransomware incident.

3. Use Office 365

• Office 365 (now called Microsoft 365) applications such as OneDrive and Microsoft Teams are used to host your files and use software versioning. In the past you would rename your files to preserve different versions (i.e. draft, revision 1, final, etc.). Now with version history, you can prevent file loss. Worst-case scenario is you lose your latest version of the file, but Microsoft automatically makes a backup of all your other changes, as long as you don’t rename the file.

4. Use Azure Site Recovery (ASR)

• If you are not in the cloud or need to keep some of your servers on-premises, ASR is here to help. Your backups are stored off-site in the Microsoft datacenter and can even be stored in a second geographic location. You will always have a spare backup that the ransomware can’t get to. Using ASR, you can recover a single file, restore a virtual machine or even failover an on-premise virtual machine to the Microsoft cloud within seconds to minutes.

Check out another Encore blog article that discusses cyber security: The 3 BEST Things to do to Protect your Business – Cyber Security.

Let’s work together to ensure your organization is protected. Contact us if you have any questions.