Ransomware with Craig MacAlpine and Joel Witts

School districts, health care organizations, cities, and towns have all been victims of ransomware. Families have lost access to photo albums of 20 years of memories and personal finances. It can be a very devastating experience. It is very scary to not be able to do your job or access your data.  Now attackers are not only threatening to delete your data, but they are also threatening to leak the data.  This can cause lawsuits, legal ramifications, and a huge headache for businesses large and small. 

What is ransomware?  Ransomware is a type of malware that gets installed on your machine and it locks all of your files so you can’t access them.  It spreads very quickly through your computer and you may be unable to access crucial programs and files.  Often you get a message from the attackers requesting money or your data will be leaked or deleted. Craig and Joel share their expert insights on how to prevent these attacks. 

Craig MacAlpine is the founder and CEO of Expert Insights and a passionate security innovator with over 20 years of experience in information security and product management previously founding e-mail security company EPA Cloud. 

Joel Witts is a Senior Content Editor at Expert Insights covering a multitude of areas including cybersecurity.

We talk about ransomware and best practices for protecting you, your family and your business.  We specifically discuss ways ransomware can get in, how you can be affected, and ways to protect against it.  We talk about secure gateway products, post-delivery protection, and isolation.  This episode will help you figure out what solution can offer the best protection to your family and business.  

Show Notes:

• [01:38] - Ransomware is a type of malware that gets installed on your machine and it locks all of your files so you can’t access them.  It spreads very quickly through your computer and may be unable to access crucial programs and files.  Often you get a message from the attackers requesting money or your data will be leaked or deleted. 
• [03:14] - With a lot of scams there is a level of emotion and urgency in the ransom component.  
• [04:50] - Travelex was hit on New Year’s Eve this past year and it closed their operations down for a week while they had to go to a manual basis and had a 32 million dollar hit. 
• [06:08] - Ransomware is something that affects all the way up from small to large businesses.  The most common targets are healthcare, education, towns, and cities.   
• [07:19] - The average ransom sum is increasing to over $40,000. 
• [09:01] - There is conflicting advice on whether the company should pay the ransom or not.  There is no guarantee that you will get your data back.   
• [09:59] - Ransomware has become more of a well-known issue.  Businesses are putting more measures in place to try and mitigate the risks from these threats. 
• [11:10] - A common way for ransomware to start in an organization is through phishing attacks which are difficult to stop.  Phishing is a type of email that tries to trick a user into performing an action.  
• [13:31] - If you have got a savvy phisher whose updating that content it is really hard for the gateway systems to pick that up.  
• [14:14] - The email may be the start of the phish, but not the method that the malware is downloaded that is just where they start the conversation. 
• [17:03] - Secure gateway products usually do a good job stopping spam and phishing emails.  Typically 98-99% of these threats will get stopped with those products.