So what is Cryptolocker and Ransomware? You’ve likely heard about it on the news and Internet. Ransomware is a classification of malicious software that encrypts data on your computer and potentially your entire business network, then demands you pay a ransom in order to decrypt your data.

The fee is anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands depending on which variant of the infection you have.

To make things worse, most antivirus and anti-malware software is unable to stop it. This virus is incredibly well designed and actually masks itself as a different type of file. It will usually enter your network via a finely crafted email that may look like it came as a scan from your photocopier or a FedEx delivery message etc.

Once you open the file, the infection will run like wild fire through your computer encrypting nearly any file you have access to. It will also connect to any network drive, across your network and into your server files or any other shared files and folders on other computers on your network.

If you don’t catch it fast, or if this happens on a Friday afternoon and it runs all weekend when your office is closed, consider your data gone. There is no way to get your data back without doing one of two things:

Pay the ridiculous fee and hope these guys actually give you the decryption key.
Restore your data from backup.

Those are the options. This is why it is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT to make sure you always have up to date and working backups. If you’re a business owner and have an IT company managing your technology, make sure it is top priority to have your backups tested on a regular basis!

I cannot stress that enough. TEST YOUR BACKUPS REGULARLY to make sure they are working when you need them. There’s nothing worse than having a server crash or a virus infection like Cryptolocker wipe out your entire server and then finding out your backups haven’t been working for the past weeks, months or even years!

This can end your business permanently!

An ideal backup solution will include local backup to some sort of file storage device like a NAS (network attached storage) device or even a large USB drive connected to your server. Make sure you’re doing full image backups meaning everything is included. Files, settings, programs, the entire operating system should be included.

Doing full image backups will take up a lot more space but it will make for a much faster recovery time if you ever need to rebuild your server. Faster recovery means less downtime for your office and will minimize any lost revenue due to office closure.

In addition to a local backup, you’ll also want off-site storage. In the old days this meant changing tape cartridges in your server every day and taking them to your home or safety deposit box on a regular basis. Nowadays, online backup is the way to go. Work with your IT company or do some digging on Google to find a backup solution that includes offsite cloud storage of your data.

Make sure you are conscious of were your offsite data is stored. There are restrictions in some cases as to where your data can geographically reside. Law firms in Canada for example (at time of writing this post) must have their data stored ideally in the same province and must remain in Canada.

As you can see, dealing with Cryptolocker Ransomware is a very scary task for any business. If you haven’t been affected yet, consider yourself lucky and take the time now to make sure your backups are in good standing.

For those that have been affected, you’ll now likely never forget to check your backups again. This is a good thing and I wish more companies put a higher priority on testing their backups regularly and didn’t need something like Cryptolocker Ransomware to scare them into it.

So what steps should you take to prevent Cryptolocker Ransomware? Most are quite simple:

1. Educate your staff and make them aware of this post and related articles online. The more fear they have, the safer they will be.
2. Make sure staff don’t have administrative rights on their local computer or the network.
3. Implement a solid antivirus, anti-malware and email filtering solution.
4. Oh yeah, did I mention MAKE SURE YOUR BACKUPS ARE WORKING and make sure you have an off-site backup because Cryptolocker can infect your backups as well!

Dealing with Cryptolocker Ransomware if you’ve been infected:

1. If you cannot immediately identify which computer is infected (you’ll usually see a popup message with some kind of ransom page) then shut off every computer in your office including the server.
2. Call your IT company and tell them what has happened, they’re likely to be very familiar with the issue and have a game plan ready to go.
3. Assess the damage with your IT company.
4. Restore from backups or pay the ransom.
5. Use this as an opportunity to review your backup solution and what could have been done better.

Most importantly, try not to panic as this will only cause more stress and chaos at your office and may lead to bad decisions being made. You need to involve the professionals when dealing with Cryptolocker Ransomware. Call your IT company and work with them to resolve and restore.

When talking about IT, we should consider that this field is vast and integrates big pieces of today’s technology. Nothing is spared, and almost everything that we use can be related to IT. Representing an integral part of our daily lives IT builds the fabric of our modern and careless lives.

IT is a great asset for any enterprise that wants to succeed because it is such a big factor when creating and developing products, devices and ensuring proper operational flux.

Companies that offer the support, integration, design and also facilitate other critical parts of the IT environment are a worthy collaborator. Offering a wide array of services that are meant to improve enterprises, these solutions will generate the growth of important areas of one’s business.

Power, safety and an operational flux that always delivers the best results is what an enterprise will achieve once a proper IT environment is set up.

All aspects of a business are significant and making sure they all function correctly is of the utmost importance. Growing competition and higher demands from the clients have transformed the way IT is integrated and used.

Based on experience and with the help of specialists companies that offer IT services will become a constant support, and will succeed in replacing the classic full-time department. Management teams will see real time changes that may affect the workload of the business, making sure service and support teams respond when needed.

To ensure a company stays ahead of its competitors all aspects of the IT environment have to be taken care of. The design of a robust environment that can be used as a tool starts by acknowledging the needs of the business and the results that must be met.

Health check-up of the actual environment is made to make sure it can function correctly and safely while being able to maintain the workload. If needed, proper hardware solutions are suggested so that upgrades can be done. Audits are a great way to discover breaches that may affect or damage the current setup.

No Sacramento IT environment must be left unattended, and safety measures must be taken into consideration, as well as back-up and disaster recovery procedures to create a high-availability architecture.

To properly integrate all the solutions, companies that offer services will gladly set up the office space and enclosures so that a constant and normal workflow may be obtained. Structured cabling if provided as the need to organize massive architectures usually involves the proper management of a network.

Another critical aspect is maintaining a functional work grid; this issue falls into the hands of management teams and technicians that offer support on many levels. IT companies use the latest technologies to create, maintain and upgrade a critical piece of the business infrastructure.

Overcome all IT obstacles with Aperio IT as a partner. We deliver top quality and fast responses to any IT problems your company may be facing. Our dedicated staff of experienced technicians will maintain the current architecture or even create new improved environments for your needs. With a team of experts that can manage any aspect regarding IT, we offer professional, reliable services

You bought your PC half a year ago, and sometimes you are just amazed at how quickly it seems to run much more slowly than when you just bought it. Since money doesn’t grow on trees, you want to optimize your system in a safe way so you can keep getting good performance from your computer.

I will focus on these 4 key elements:

1. Temporary internet files and cookies
2. Defragmentation
3. System tools running in the background
4. Keeping your system updated

Let us begin the journey towards a faster PC. This is great fun once you learn the tricks, and it’s totally free, so you can easily do this on your own machine.

Temporary Internet Files and Cookies

No, it’s not cookies you eat. Cookies are actually small text files that will track your searches online. Haven’t you wondered that you just searched for a drilling machine, and then – when you’re on Facebook – ads turn up that show drilling machines? You need not wonder any more.

You need to enter Settings in your browser menu, and then clean temporary internet files and cookies, delete search history, and delete all unnecessary browser data from time to time. The interval between this depends on how much you actually use your computer, but generally once a week would be a very good idea.

The idea behind temporary internet files is good because it offers you a chance to access internet pages without having to reload everything again. However, this was actually far more relevant back in the days when we had slow internet connections. Nowadays, we all have 20 megabit (or more), and consequently the time involved in reloading the website is far less important than it was before.

Defragmentation

Your hard drive is a bit crazy. It stores files in the first available pocket on your drive, and then finds another spot when the file you are trying to save, and yet another until the entire file has been saved. Over time that causes files to lie scattered all over your hard drive, and this costs quite a bit in loading files once you need to work on your PowerPoint presentations or to watch your videos.

Again, defragmentation was even more powerful when we had slower drives, but nowadays, the challenge is still that hard drives are getting larger as we speak, and therefore the scattering of data is still quite a challenge for many programs.

Your system should defragment regularly, but it all depends on whether you have set up your system to do this. Check your hard drive by right-clicking the C-drive, and choosing Properties. You will then see an option for Optimization that offers you automation under Advanced settings.

System Tools Running in the Background

When you have many programs next to your system watch at the bottom right of your screen, you need to check what you actually use, and what could be removed from starting automatically every time you start up your PC. Freeing even just 5-10% of your system memory can add 25% to your system performance, so there’s quite a bit to be achieved from taking a look at this.

Keeping Your System Updated

Just as with automating defragmentation, then keeping your system updated is important, especially if you only use your computer quite rarely. Your system will check for updates, but if you haven’t turned on your computer after a vacation, it is highly recommended that you check for updates from your control panel. System errors can be avoided when you do this, so this is high priority.

Conclusion

If you follow these four steps, you will see that your system will run much more smoothly, and best of all, these steps were all free of charge – available for all.