With much of the news revolving around the inauguration of President Donald Trump, it might have been easy to miss the revelations in the world of cybersecurity. A number of new, and old, malware variants were exposed, and the tech world began doing more to protect themselves against attack. With these revelations came new products ready to fight against ransomware, putting data protection at the forefront of cybersecurity. The headlines were endless, but we made it our mission to gather the most relevant and most intriguing, topics of discussion. What did you miss?

The threat of ransomware (a type of malware that hijacks computer systems and demands ransom) is so great that it became paramount for backup vendors to introduce technology to protect backups from such attacks.

The wait is over! We are excited to announce the immediate availability of Acronis True Image 2017 New Generation, a powerful personal backup software packed with new ground-breaking features designed to pull the world out of the multi-billion-dollar ransomware nightmare. It also has the capacity to certify and verify the data through blockchain technology.

A survey conducted by Acronis in December 2016 exposed the lack of awareness and understanding of the imminent danger presented by ransomware  — an increasingly-pervasive form of malware that encrypts the victim’s files, denying access to them until the user pays an online ransom of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Respondents placed high value on personal data, but were not prepared to pay any ransom in case of an attack. The survey revealed that while 71 percent of the respondents worry about the safety of their personal data and 41 percent say they cannot afford to lose any of it, 56 percent have no plan for recovering that data if it is lost or held hostage by cyber criminals.