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How To Block Ransomware Attacks

There are many things your business can do to block ransomware. Each of these things will vary in its degree of effectiveness but you should still be knowledgeable regarding them.

Staff Awareness

Making your staff aware of what ransomware is about is an important security step to take. All it takes is one employee to let their guard down and your business could be compromised. While you may still succumb to an attack, hopefully, your employees will know what to do when it happens.

Implement a Spam Filter

Cybercriminals are known for randomly sending lots of malicious emails to businesses and their employees. This is why you’ll want to make sure that you have an effective spam filter in place. Make sure that the one you choose is able to continually adapt to any new threats that are picked up by your cloud-based intelligence center. These spam filters can prevent over 99% of ransomware attacks from ever reaching your employees.

Configure Desktops Extensions

When it comes time to teach your employees how to block ransomware one thing they should know is that they should never double-click on executable files (those with .exe extensions). Unfortunately, the default setting for Windows hides the type of file extension you’ve downloaded. For instance, a malicious executable entitled “evil.doc.exe” may simply show up as a Word document, “evil.doc.” This is why it’s important to make sure that file extensions are always displayed.

Block Executables

To block ransomware from being delivered to your employees you can filter files that have a .exe extension. It’s important to understand that this isn’t foolproof though. Employees can still receive malicious emails in which they’re instructed to rename a file. Today a growing number of ransomware files are also being delivered as JavaScript files.

Block Malicious JavaScript Files

It’s common for ransomware to be delivered in .zip files that contain malicious JavaScript files today. These files are usually disguised as a textfile with a name like “readme.txt.js” with only “readme.txt” being visible. To prevent your employees from downloading these malicious files disable the Windows Script Host.

Restrict Use of Elevated Privilege

Ransomware is only able to encrypt files that are accessible to certain users on their system. The only time this is different is if the attack includes a code that elevates the user’s privileges. This is where things like zero trust and patching come into play.

Taking the time to take some of these steps to block ransomware is important. Thankfully there are many ways in which you can do this and keep your business safe today.

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