How to protect against ransomware Cryptowall attacks

By far the worst virus that has ever existed is the Cryptowall virus. Most virus up until this point tried to steal information, caused a computer to system to crash, or just the nuisance of advertisements. The Cryptowall virus is horrible because it takes your personal data including documents, pictures, and music and encrypts it holding it for a ransom payment. Getting a ransomware virus on a computer can be bad enough bad having it infect a business environment is even worse. This article will describe some simple steps that you can take to protect your data against the Cryptowall virus.

      1.Always keep an up to date antivirus on your system.

I have seen many systems get this infection that do not have antivirus installed on them. Without having a good antivrus on all of your computers you run the risk of getting all kinds of viruses. If you have an organization that needs protection on multiple computers the best approach is to purchase a subscription with your firewall vendor. This will actually scan all data coming into your network before it even has a chance to touch any of your computers. If you are trying to protect your home PC or have a small number of computers in an office then purchasing a software antivirus subscription should be sufficient.

       2. Always backup your data.

There are a couple of different approaches to this. You can backup your data onto an external hard drive or a network drive but by far the best approach is to setup an offsite backup that provides incremental backup. This is because the ransomware viruses are becoming more intelligent and have recently been known to be able to spread to external hard drives and even across your internal network. Setting an offsite backup will allow you to restore your files if your local files become corrupt.

      3. Act quickly.

If you notice that you have files that are encrypted that does not mean that all of your files have become encrypted. The quicker you react to having this situation the more likely that your data will not become encrypted or will be able to be restored.