New Flavour of “Locky” Ransomware Virus. 3 Tips to Stay Safe!

This month, a new flavour of the ransomware virus called “Locky” was unleashed into the wild. This is important, listen up!

What is Ransomware?

Ransomware is a computer virus that will encrypt all of your documents, making them useless. If you have access to a network folder, such as a “Public” drive, it will encrypt those, too. Then, they send you to a website asking for a large sum of money in order to decrypt them.

If you are lucky, your data is backed up and can be recovered in a few hours. However, these recoveries are costly, in TIME. If a network drives become encrypted, everyone who accesses those files is debilitated. Any changes made since the previous night’s backup are lost. Not only that, but the person who’s computer contracted the virus will be down for up to 1 day while their computer is quarantined.

3 TIPS TO AVOID RANSOMWARE

1. Don’t open suspicious email attachments, even if it’s from someone you know. Attackers can “spoof” email addresses, so it looks like an email from someone you know. They often come in the form of “Hey John, please review the following payroll and send back to me.” If you aren’t someone who handles payroll, or weren’t expecting that email, don’t click it!
2. Be wary of “typically safe” email attachments. Attackers can hide viruses in regular documents such as Word documents, spreadsheets, or pdfs. Make absolute sure the sender is trusted and that the email isn’t suspicious before opening these.
3. Absolutely do NOT open an email attachment with the ending .exe. This is an application and very likely to be a virus. Under no circumstance should you open an email attachment with the ending .exe.

IF YOU’RE EVER IN DOUBT

Don’t hesitate to contact us. Your organization’s security is our top priority. We can very quickly identify threats and by letting us know about suspicious emails we can more accurately mitigate future risks. If your data isn’t currently backed up, it is imperative that you get a back up system set up immediately.