Beware of Ransomware

Did you know that criminals can disable the functionality of your computer by restricting your access to it in some way? What’s scarier than this is that they then can demand a ransom to be paid to restore the system’s functionality. This is called Ransomware, and it is affecting businesses everywhere.

Ransomware is taking on a new form as a service, and is currently enabling affiliates to obtain a piece of ransomware from a crime boss and distribute it to victims as these affiliates wish.

Vitali Kremez, a cybercrime intelligence analyst with Flashpoint has started to see developers considering giving their malware free of charge to criminals and keeping 40-50 percent of each ransomware payment made. This new business model has triggered newcomers to start spreading ransomware quickly. The different ways they can attack corporations and individuals are through bonnet installs, email, social media phishing campaigns, compromised dedicated servers and file-sharing websites.

Malicious infrastructure is growing and is being built globally. Infoblox, a company that delivers solutions to protect against the rising flood of malware and distributed-denial-of-service DDoS attacks has created a threat index to measure the activity that is happening worldwide. During this year’s first quarter the index reached it’s highest point ever: 137. This is a jump from 2013, when the threat index was only 76.

A great way for companies to protect themselves from ransomware is with two factor authentication, 2FA, which requires both something you have and something you know in order to access an account. Chris Webber, the security strategist at Centrify points out that it’s more and more critical that we need to figure out how to put 2FA everywhere, because passwords alone are just not a great way to do authentication anymore.

To continue learning more about how you can protect your business from ransomware, check out John P. Mello Jr.’s article, “Crime Pays: Ransomware Bosses Make $90k Annually, in TechNewsWorld site.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Crime-Pays-Ransomware-Bosses-Make-90K-Annually-83603.html

www.infoblox.com

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