In case you haven’t heard already, 2018 is the year of ransomware. Last year saw a huge increase in the number and severity of ransomware attacks, and it’s only expected to increase this year. Not only are hackers getting smarter about how to bypass current security measures, but they are also happily selling their ransomware kits on the dark web for any aspiring hacker to spread their own viruses.

There is no hardware or software that provides complete, 100 percent protection from ransomware by itself. As Trend Micro recently reported, not even cloud applications are totally safe. Protecting yourself from ransomware is an involved process from both the managed services provider you work with as well as your own employees.

Here are a few things you need to do or else you leave yourself completely exposed to ransomware disaster:

Backups, backups, backups!

A ransomware attack holds your files hostage, and only gives them back to you at a price. Even if you pay the ransom, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get your files back, and even if you do that they’ll be in the state they were in before the attack. It’s not like the hacker is contractually obligated to make sure you get you retrieve your files, or that you can leave them a bad Yelp review. Once the hacker gets their money, they don’t care what happens next.

This is why it’s of the utmost importance that you back up all of your files, especially the ones you rely on for your business. Not only this, but make sure you are continually backing up your files, because falling back on six-month-old files is still going to set your business back six months.

Extra Security is Necessary Security

Keeping your operating system and work applications up to date is nice and definitely improves security, but it’s not nearly enough if you want peace of mind. Two key pieces of security we recommend every business have on their network is an external email filtering software and a firewall with unified threat management.

The operative word in ‘external email filtering’ is external – as in, not the filter that your email comes with. While it does do a good job of filtering out most spam emails to the spam folder, it doesn’t catch everything. It doesn’t matter if you use Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, or whatever email service you use, an external email filtering software will catch the more clever spam emails that get by the normal filters.

Not all firewalls are created equal, either. If you don’t know what unified threat management (UTM) is, then refer to this handy definition from Fortinet. “UTM consolidates multiple security and networking functions all on one appliance to protect businesses while simplifying their infrastructure.”

Basically, it means you get better security across more platforms. Firewalls with UTM are also cloud compliant and work perfectly for a business that utilizes mobile devices. It saves business leaders the headache from installing a million different things to secure each and every application they use. Instead, take advantage of a strong firewall with UTM.

If you are interested in working with a cloud service provider that can offer you all of these services (and much, much more), learn more about TOSS C3 by reading our White Pages and call us anytime at 1-888-884-8677.