Critical Information on New Ransomware

Embed from Getty Images Hot off the press, there’s a new version on ransomware that is cheaper to unlock, and there’s bad news and more bad news. Yes, they charge only a portion of a bitcoin to get the key to unlock the files they’ve encrypted.  Except that they haven’t encrypted them. They’ve actually deleted the files. So if you […]

Limit Your Exposure

Unless you always save to your external drive or your mapped drive on your home server, you might consider disconnecting when not in use. The encrypting malware is getting really sophisticated and extends its reach to your mapped drives. That means if your offsite online backup solution operates as a mapped drive, your safety net could become no more useful […]

You Can Survive Most Crypto Attacks–For Now

Rule Number One: Don’t get infected. But if you do, follow Rule Number Two: Clean it off your system immediately. If you read my post on CryptoLocker, you’re aware that it’s not always just that easy. Without a good backup you run the risk of losing everything, and even with a good backup, you’re in for a lot of work. […]

What is “The Cloud” and Should I Be Using It?

This is a very simplified network drawing done in Microsoft Visio, using commonly accepted symbols. Something like this, only much more complex, would be used for planning a new network or an upgrade or change, or to identify where the technology components of a network are. In the center of the diagram, you see a Cloud symbol. This symbol has […]

Cryptolocker–there is no cure, so best prevent

There’s a nasty piece of malware out there called Cryptolocker. You won’t know you’re infected with it until you get the notice that your files are encrypted and if you don’t pay $300 by a certain date the decryption key will be destroyed, causing you to lose all your files forever. At this time only Windows operating systems are vulnerable, […]

How to Contact a Professional

I want you to feel comfortable and confident in dealing with a lot of your computer conditions. But there is a point when you should NOT try to do it yourself. That point is where you don’t feel comfortable, and when there is too much to lose.   Most computer problems that people have are NOT hardware related, they’re software […]