By the year 2025 projected that the cybercrime industry will be worth approximately $10 trillion. This is largely part due to cyber criminals implementing ransomware on a more frequent basis.
The Cryptolocker virus in particular is a notoriously dangerous type of ransomware virus you need to know about. Let’s explore everything should keep in mind.
What Exactly Is the Cryptolocker Virus?
This virus is a type of ransomware that was specifically made to compromise sensitive information. In general this includes financial data names addresses etc.
Interestingly though this information is not always able to be procured by the hacker. To elaborate the Cryptolocker virus simply aims to prevent a user from accessing their own information.
This can be especially crippling for small businesses. Even short periods of downtime could cost the organization tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity.
How Does It Work?
Users unknowingly download a malicious email attachment that executes the Cryptolocker virus code. But you can also infect your machine through filesharing.
Once activated the virus encrypts data on your computer and prevents all access to it unless a ransom is paid. Whether the ransom that the hacker asks for is high or low the FBI strongly recommends against paying it.
This will only serve to keep the hacker adequately funded which could contribute to additional attacks in the future.
If the ransom isn’t paid however the hacker will threaten to delete the affected information or keep it encrypted indefinitely. For this reason many people choose to immediately satisfy the hackers' demands in order to regain access.
Fortunately there are steps you can take to prevent this occurrence altogether.
How Can I Protect Myself?
First and foremost you want to practice safe browsing habits to prevent yourself from encountering the virus in the first place. This means that you should immediately delete suspicious emails. You should also never download files from a questionable source.
You can also modify the permissions on the computer to eliminate global access groups. This means that you can decide what users on your machine are able to access certain files and folders.
In many circumstances this could drastically reduce the number of files that the virus is able to compromise.
The virus is also relatively easy to detect since it aims to affect a large number of files within a short period of time. For instance if you notice that many different files have been modified by a single user on your machine within minutes there’s a strong chance that you’re dealing with this type of ransomware.
In the event that your sensitive data becomes compromised our Arcus service is a viable solution. It allows users to recover and restore any data that was destroyed stolen etc.
So keep this in mind when looking for ways that you can help protect your company's information.
Dealing With the Cryptolocker Virus Can Be Frightening
But the information listed above will ensure that you handle it appropriately. From here you can minimize the number of complications that result from the Cryptolocker virus and navigate the incident as smoothly as possible.
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