7 Best Practices to Prevent and Mitigate Ransomware Attacks

Incidents of ransomware are on the rise and overtaking other types of malware to become one of the most serious threats to an organization’s reputation, financial stability, and proprietary data.

According to a new report from anti-malware firm Enigma Software, ransomware incidents grew by 159 percent since March, accounting for the largest percentage of overall malware infections in April.

The problem has become so bad that the FBI recently warned the public about ransomware.

“These criminals have evolved over time and now bypass the need for an individual to click on a link. They do this by seeding legitimate websites with malicious code, taking advantage of unpatched software on end-user computers,” FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James Trainor said in a statement.

“The FBI doesn’t support paying a ransom in response to a ransomware attack. Paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee an organization that it will get its data back—we’ve seen cases where organizations never got a decryption key after having paid the ransom,” Trainor said. “Paying a ransom not only emboldens current cyber criminals to target more organizations, it also offers an incentive for other criminals to get involved in this type of illegal activity. And finally, by paying a ransom, an organization might inadvertently be funding other illicit activity associated with criminals.”

Here are 7 best practices to prevent and mitigate the impact of ransomware. 

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