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Effective Methods Of Prevention

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Ransomware: Effective Methods of Prevention
Introduction
Ransomware attacks have been on the rise over the past couple of years, especially this year when there have been daily reports of hospitals, schools, and police departments falling victim to digital extortion. The Business Insider reported that victims paid more than 24 million dollars to cybercriminals because of ransomware (Turkel, 2016).
The occurrence of ransomware has been on the rise in 2016 with its mention in the news almost daily with reports of one cybersecurity firm responding to three or four incidents of ransomware a week during the first quarter alone (Ragan, 2016). Ed Cabrera, the Vice President of Cybersecurity Strategy at Trend Micro quoted the United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper as “claiming that cyber attacks have surpassed terrorism” when it comes to national security (2016). Federal agencies in the United States spend approximately 100 million dollars a year fighting cybercrime (Runciman, 2011).
Problem Statement
Cybercriminals seem to be always a step or two ahead of security vulnerability patch development, so there will always be vulnerabilities for ransomware to exploit. Keeping computers updated with the latest patches is only part the defense against ransomware. Users are often seen as the weakest link in network security, so training the users on good network practices may help to eliminate the introduction of ransomware to a system or

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