It finally happened. Somehow, my computer (complete with Anti-virus and anti-malware products) was attacked by ransomware. Ransomware, if you don’t know, encrypts documents (office, pictures, pdf, etc) on your computer and asks you to pay a ransom to get them back. Outside of paying the ransom, the only way to get your data back is to restore from backup. You do have a backup, right?
If your backups are good, everything’s OK, right? Probably…
But, what if you use a cloud service like OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive to save and sync your files?
For me, the ransomware on my computer found the directory which is automatically synced to OneDrive, and OneDrive dutifully synced the changes to the cloud, so all my cloud data became encrypted as well.
Fantastic.
Cloud services aren’t taking backups of all your documents. You may be able to roll back to a previous version of some files, but that’s not really a guarantee. You need to back up your cloud data the same way you already protect your local files. As we put more and more data in the cloud for the convenience of having it everywhere, it becomes increasingly vital to protect it the same way you’ve been protecting your mission critical file shares and emails for years.
Fortunately, there are solutions, and PEI can help. Call us direct @ 303-823-4321.
Shane Skriletz, PEI
