Another fast-moving ransomware attack is tearing across the globe, striking a number of high-profile businesses, transportation networks, public utilities and government agencies in Europe and the United States. The attack was initially focused in Ukraine and Russia. The National Bank of Ukraine saw ATMs across the country go down, and systems monitoring radiation at the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant were also affected. Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft, was also hit. Within hours the ransomware had spread in a manner reminiscent of last month’s WannaCry attack, victimizing the Copenhagen-based A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, and WPP in London, the world’s largest advertising agency, as well as entities in France and Spain. It eventually hopped the Atlantic and landed in the United States.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on May 25, 2018 and it’s going to affect every business operating in the EU or dealing with EU customers. The new regulation replaces the outdated European Data Protection Directive that was adopted in 1995, and is designed to harmonize data privacy laws across the EU member states, protecting EU citizens’ personal data. Acronis is committed to full GDPR compliance — both as a company dealing with EU customers and as a vendor providing data protection technology to other businesses that are subject to GDPR regulation. Acronis Products and Services provide everything needed to perform personal data processing in accordance with the new regulations.

If there is one thing Acronis is known for, it is protecting the data on your hard drive. What’s not as well-known is how thoroughly Acronis True Image allows you to wipe the data from a previously used hard drive when you’re preparing it for resale or use in a new computer. Securing your data means taking steps to ensure it doesn’t end up in the wrong hands — and the Acronis Drive Cleanser feature makes it quick and easy.

Acronis Notary™ creates digital certificates, based on checksums of your files, and then stores these certificates in the blockchain database, Ethereum, to ensure they can never be modified.