Have you ever wondered what the deal is with ransomware? You may have read it about it online or heard it on the news. You may know a friend that got hit with ransomware or know of another business that did. If you want to know a little bit more about ransomware and how to protect your small business, you've come to the right place.
What exactly is ransomware?
Ransomware, or sometimes called ransom malware, is a type of malware that prevents you as a user from accessing any of the data on your computer or being able to access your computer at all. All of your documents, whether it be PDFs, word documents, or QuickBooks files, won’t be accessible. You can try to open them, but the computer won't let you. Your computer is basically rendered useless unless you pay the ransom to the bad guys so they can send you a key to unlock all of your encrypted files. In the late 80s, payment was sent to the bad guys via snail Mail. Nowadays, the bad guys want payment sent via cryptocurrency or even your credit card. Statistics show, that only 50% of paid ransoms actually get the key returned to unlock your small business files.