This week, Wall Street Journal MarketWatch reporter Priya Anand quoted me in an article she wrote about the new wave of ransomware phishing attacks.
She started out with: "Malware attacks that hijack your computer files until you pay a ransom increased by 500% from January to December last year, reaching 600,000 identified cases, according to a report released Tuesday by the security software company Symantec. And the kidnappers may not take cash. The criminals increasingly demand cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as payment, and have raked in some tens of millions of dollars in the last year." And here is my quote:
"The criminals often give their victims a decryption key to get back their files after receiving a ransom. For small businesses that haven’t backed up files, it becomes a game of chance, says Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of the Clearwater, Florida-based security consulting and training company KnowBe4. “If you have a choice between losing a month’s worth of work or playing the game, you’re going to…just pay up and hope it doesn’t happen again,” he says.
Unless you step your users through effective Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training, that is...
