Ransomware, a piece of malware that searches networks and devices to find documents to encrypt causing the targeted person to be unable to access their devices, is unfortunately on the rise. The malicious people then demand money to allow you to regain access. Communications Director Ken Helms says the most important piece for protection is always have a backup:
“The most important thing with it, everyone should always have backups. A lot of the times one of the things we see in IT is they only have one backup and maybe that is an external hard drive or flash drive that they just keep plugged into their computer and just periodically back up files to it and that use to work and that use to be good practice to always have usually just one backup, maybe two, but now with the advancements in ransomware, you really need to have multiple copies and you need to have one that is not plugged into anything; an offline backup completely.”
If you ever receive an email, phone call, text message, or letter that looks or sounds suspicious, feel free to contact your local banker.