Documents can be shared with any platform such as Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS and Ubuntu. Data Guard will also have clients on Mac OS, Debian and Linux by the end of this summer.

Ransomware is a form of malware (trojan or other virus) utilized by malicious actors to extort money from individuals, businesses, and governments. While many types of ransomware exist, a typical attack encrypts a victim’s data and displaying instructions how to pay a ransom payment – usually in the form of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Ransomware is not cheap and there is no guarantee for success in decryption.

In fact, while cybercriminals promise to provide a decryption key upon payment of the ransom – 40% of victims who pay unfortunately never regain access to their data.

Ransomware has become an enormous business perpetrated by both organized crime and nation-state actors.

Organized criminals are motivated by extorting as much money as possible. Increasingly they distribute their malware as ransomware kits that anyone can use – even if they don’t have much technical expertise. The ransomware as a service (RaaS) model sadly has been very effective at spreading malicious software. The criminals facilitate the payments and decryptions while taking a percentage of the collected ransom.

The majority of popular ransomware strains utilize such strong encryption that decrypting files is unfortunately not possible. In limited cases, older ransomware families (Rakhni, Agent.iih, Aura, and a few others) have decryptors available.

The simple answer is no. While some anti-virus solutions protect against older versions of ransomware, this protection is done “after the hack”. The only way to defeat ransomware is to not allow it to take hold of your files in the first place.