Small and medium business owners often assume they're not a likely target of cybercrime. This is a dangerous mistake for to make. Cyber attacks on smaller organizations can be devastating, and recent surveys suggest just how common they can be.Half of the smaller businesses surveyed by Hiscox said they'd been targeted, with forty-four percent of those saying they experienced between two and four attacks. Phishing and business email compromise (BEC) were top concerns, with ransomware also posing a significant threat. Small and medium businesses, in fact, paid some $301 million in ransomware attacks in 2016.
A survey of managed service providers that work with one-hundred-thousand small and medium businesses found that ninety-nine percent of the providers saw ransomware attacks on the rise. The most effective strategy against attack is cybersecurity training for employees and, especially for ransomware, regular back-up of data and systems.
Researchers noted some business owners were willing to pay the ransom rather than experience downtime. But paying ransom is no guarantee of recovering data. Cyber experts urge victims not to pay ransom. A majority of companies that refused to pay ransom recovered their data from back-ups, reducing the attack's effects to a nuisance.
A Radware survey confirmed that losing data is a major concern of small businesses. Carl Herberger of Radware stated that paying hackers ransom incentivizes future attacks and helps fund their criminal activities.
Regular system backups, well-trained employees, and a solid cybersecurity strategy are small businesses’ best defense. Tailored, interactive training helps on all three fronts. PYMNTS.com has the story: https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2018/smbs-ransomware-attack-cybersecurity-cyberattack/
Bad guys are constantly coming out with new malware versions to evade detection. That’s why we’ve updated our Ransomware Simulated tool “RanSim” to include a new cryptomining scenario!
This new cryptomining scenario simulates a Monero cryptocurrency-mining operation on the local machine. Monero mining is the most popular cryptocurrency mined by real-world malware and takes a lot of CPU and GPU cycles to process the data necessary to generate the currencies.
Try KnowBe4’s NEW Ransomware Simulator tool and get a quick look at the effectiveness of your existing network protection against the latest threats.
RanSim will simulate 13 ransomware infection scenarios and 1 cryptomining infection scenario to show you if a workstation is vulnerable to infection.
Here's how RanSim works:
- 100% harmless simulation of real ransomware and cryptomining infection scenarios
- Does not use any of your own files
- Tests 14 different types of infection scenarios
- Just download the install and run it
- Results in a few minutes!
This is a complementary tool and will take you 5 minutes max. RanSim may give you some insights about your endpoint security you never expected!
Get the new Ransim here:
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https://info.knowbe4.com/ransomware-simulator-tool-1
