Ransomware about six months ago, every week at least one of our point-of-sale sites was being hit with a ransomware attack, and it was looking like the problem was going to get worse. Client's computers were being locked out. I am pleased to say almost always we could get our clients up and running without paying the ransom.
Now we have noticed a dramatic reduction is the number of such attacks. Much of this has to do with improved security in the retail industry. Something that I believe we had something to do with and in our marketspace, it would be fair to say we became the leader in this such as pushing an earliest introduction to windows 10 partly because of its superior anti-malware handling, pushing people to adopt cloud and local image backup, creating general awareness of the problems through newsletters and blog posts, etc. All this advice is still valid and our latest advice on how to stop ransomware is here.
Having said that although we are clearly seeing a significant fall in ransomware attacks, it certainly not over, and until it is, retailers need to remain careful.
Our advice too remains unchanged, if you do get hit by ransomware is do not pay the ransom. Paying these criminals sometimes gets your data back, but generally it does not as these criminals know that they cannot be sued and they know you have no legal recourse to get your money back.
PS If you are interested in learning how the ransomware business model works; a good study can be found here.
