Ransomware attacks continue to plague businesses large and small. With impacts on all kinds of organizations — from independent consultants to leading health care providers, colleges to online gaming sites — employers must be alert to the dangers of ransomware.
But before companies can devise an effective strategy to thwart the hackers, it’s important to first understand what a ransomware attack looks like, how it begins and what kind of damage it can do.
|What does a ransomware attack look like?
The delivery of ransomware is simple enough. Most instances start with a phishing attack, where a user receives an e-mail containing an unsafe link or a corrupted file or executable attachment.
Many employees and contractors haven’t been trained to spot suspicious activity and are unaware of the potential risks associated with these untrusted messages — a fact the hackers count on to carry out their plans. Rather than taking a few steps to verify the e-mail’s authenticity, the employee opens the file or clicks on the web link, and a ransomware attack is born.
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