Protecting Your Business From CryptoLocker-Style Ransomware

Over the past year, ransomware families like CryptoLocker have made clear that this style of attack — quietly encrypting a victim's files and demanding a ransom, often in Bitcoin, for the decryption key — is now a serious threat to small businesses, not just large enterprises.

The single most effective defence is a reliable, tested backup that's not permanently connected to the machines it's backing up. Ransomware that reaches a mapped network drive or an always-connected external drive can encrypt your backups right along with your live data, which defeats the whole purpose.

Beyond backups, most infections start with a malicious email attachment or link, so training your team to be suspicious of unexpected attachments — particularly ZIP files and Word documents asking you to "enable macros" — goes a long way toward preventing an infection in the first place.