Ransomware: what to do and what not to do

Introduction

"Almost daily we hear stories of ransomware victims (cryptolocker) and unfortunattely the number is growing exponentionally." Arno Rijpma from Mindtime Backup: 'Our partners take care of the complete IT-management for their customers and therefor the first contact if a customer has become a victim of ransomware. Ransomware hijacks many kinds of files after the cryptolocker attachement (disguised as a trustworthy file like pdf, Word, Excel or other as well) in an e-mail has been opened. Many partners have sold their customers our Online Backup solution, but we regularly hear as well that a customer has nu (usable) backup. In this case, the customer has just a few options:

• Paying the cybercriminals (we do recommend not to, just as the police)
• Accept the loss of data
• Unlock your data (if you are very lucky: www.nomoreransom.org/decryption-tools.html)