Computer Pc Medic, Fort Collins Computer Repair, believes that the greatest threat to your home or business data today are the various crypto ransomware viruses. Names like CryptoLocker, CryptoWall, Locker, TeslaCrypt and CTB-Locker are some of the nastiest ransomware out there. Once ransomware infects a computer, it will encrypt all pictures, music, documents and database files (e.g Quicken, etc), any connected USB external hard drives, and all the data on all computers connected to the same network. If you are sharing files in a cloud, e.g. Dropbox, these files will also be encrypted.
After the encryption takes place, you will see a full-screen display, demanding hundreds of dollars (or more) to decrypt your files. If you don’t pay up in the time specified, your data, pictures and music will be lost forever.
So now what do you?
You hopefully have been backing up to an offline storage. This can be any cloud, external hard drive or network attached storage that you use to take daily (or more often) data snapshot(s) and then remove from the network, for safety.
If you are a business and don’t have an offline data snapshot system in place, you are asking for hours or weeks of downtime to recreate the data. If this is a personal home network that has been attacked, you have just lost all documents, pictures and music.