Ransomware is a serious threat that costs a lot of unbudgeted dollars to fix. Effective protection is available! Here’s what I recommend for how to protect against ransomware.
Understanding the Threat
Ransomware is not like most malware threats that slip into systems under the radar. Ransomware is a malware that must be invited in.
How to Protect Against Ransomware
3 Steps That Will Raise Your Protected Status to “Very High”
- Because ransomware must be invited in by a user of your system, it is essential to train your staff on how to recognize malicious links and avoid them. A better way to think of that may be to train your team to recognize good email and website links, so they know to avoid those that are different.
The best tool we’ve found for that is a solution called KnowBe4. Here’s what I wrote about them in my most recent book, Church IT:
- We have many team members who feel they are too busy or can’t be bothered with learning secure email practices.
- Many feel they know what they’re doing already.
- Many of those same people are the very ones who click on links in email that infect their computer or, worse, the data drive. Some get their identity stolen or, again even worse from an organizational perspective, transfer tens of thousands of dollars because someone duped them into believing the pastor or ministry leader wanted— or needed— them to.
Welcome to the rescue, KnowBe4! This service lets you set up an account and campaign that sends your team emails that look real, but are actually safe SPAM. Anyone who responds inappropriately (such as clicking a link or completing an embedded form) gets put into a kind of limbo, which he or she can only escape by watching a short, well-done online video explaining what he or she did wrong.
