You see an urgent notice from a shipping company, telling you that they were unable to deliver a package. You click on the attachment and nothing happens. A few minutes later you try opening a Word document and you’re notified that the file is encrypted. You’ve been hit with ransomware.
This scenario is all too common. In the US alone, estimates for money paid to unlock data amounted to over $100 million in 2021. And it’s on the rise. Big businesses like hospitals are getting hit but so are small mom and pop businesses, and even individuals are not immune.
When even the largest businesses with millions to spend on security get hit, you know your strategy better be a good one. The best ransomware strategy is a making a recovery plan. Online backups are essential. Backups onto USB drives are safe so long as the drive is not attached to the computer at the time the computer gets hit. If you back up to an external drive, unplug it and put it away when not copying data.
What to do if you get hit? First, reach for your backup. If that’s not available, search online for a decryption tool. Ransomware leaves notes directing you where to go to pay for decryption. That note, and the file extensions of the encrypted files, are clues to the process used. Sometimes it is possible to regain all of your data with the right decryption file.
If you have no backup and if you cannot find a decryption tool online, your only choice may be to deal with the ransomware. There are online companies that claim to have a crack team of cryptographers who can create a decryption program but that’s likely to be yet another scam. These companies will not even attempt to decrypt, they simply act as a middleman, bargain down the price and then charge you several times the price demanded by the ransom.