Battling Ransomware A ‘Constant Arms Race’

Many of us have read the stories of corporate data being held hostage in ransomware attacks, forcing businesses to pony up thousands of dollars to online criminals to unlock data files that they encrypted.

Even users of Apple Corp.’s Macintosh computers – seemingly thought of as largely impregnable to such external attacks – were impacted recently when they downloaded a piece of open-source software called Transmission, which contained ransomware that was signed with a valid Mac app development certificate, enabling it to penetrate Apple’s Gatekeeper security.

A new study by Intermedia, an IT services provider based in Mountain View, Calif., found that even though some ransomware-impacted businesses are forking over money – sometimes via the digital currency Bitcoin -- to rescue their data from their captors, the biggest impact on businesses comes in the form of lost productivity.

Ransomware has been around since 2005, said Richard Walters, senior vice president of security products at Intermedia – No. 176 on CRN’s 2015 Solution Provider 500 list.

“It is a constant arms race against the bad guys,” Walters said in an interview with IT Best of Breed. But it’s now “a lot more sophisticated in that it will now encrypt files and block access to your critical data until you pay for the key to decrypt and regain access to those files.”

The following focuses on key findings from the study, conducted of about 275 IT experts – which included VARs, managed service providers and consultants.