18 October 2016 — 3 min read
Service Providers: Fight Ransomware, Become a Superhero to Your Customers
We’ve spend the last few weeks examining various aspects of ransomware, a type of malware that encrypts computer hard drives and demands an online ransom of hundreds or thousands of dollars for the decryption key, without which users can never access their files again. In both its effectiveness and its astonishingly rapid proliferation, it represents a unique new threat both to consumers and businesses. Its ease of use by low-skilled criminals, highly-leveraged distribution model, and versatility at defeating a range of endpoint security measures is unprecedented in the history of malware. By denying access to critical applications, a ransomware attack can cost a business tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, damage the brand, and even (when hospitals and public safety organizations are the victims) put lives at risk.
