{"id":41684,"date":"2016-10-24T15:41:52","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T19:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=41684"},"modified":"2016-10-24T15:41:52","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T19:41:52","slug":"brock-professor-discusses-dangers-of-ransomware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2016\/10\/brock-professor-discusses-dangers-of-ransomware\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock professor discusses dangers of ransomware"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u00ad<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s cyber attack that knocked out some of the world\u2019s top websites has been called a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2016\/10\/24\/china-cyberattack-webcams-xiongmai\/\" target=\"_blank\">stunning breach of global Internet stability<\/a>,\u201d and is a reminder of how much of an issue cyber security has become.<\/p>\n<p>October is Cyber Security Awareness Month and more attention is being drawn to the increasing prevalence and sophistication of another internet security problem \u2014 phishing and ransomware scams.<\/p>\n<p>Teju Herath, Goodman School of Business Associate Professor of Information Systems, teaches courses on information assurance and holds an Advanced Certificate in Information Assurance.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/report-on-business\/rob-commentary\/is-your-companys-it-prepared-for-a-ransomware-attack\/article32443950\/\" target=\"_blank\">Globe and Mail op-ed<\/a> co-written with Goodman School of Business Associate Professor of Operations Management Michael Armstrong, Herath explains ransomware and why the risks are heightened with this particular type of security breach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTypical hackers steal and sell valuable data such as credit card numbers or passwords and then find customers to buy that data; however, ransomware hackers sell data back to its owners,\u201d explains Herath.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf your computer is infected by ransomware, your files will be encrypted to render them inaccessible until you pay a ransom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The FBI estimated that more than $209-million was paid in U.S. ransoms over just three months earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>Ransomware specialists are becoming more astute and no longer need to ride the coat tails of emails to infect a whole network of computers.<\/p>\n<p>Herath says computer users should run antivirus programs to detect threats, keep operating systems and applications updated, think twice before clicking on unexpected email attachments and back up files on a regular basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday\u2019s cyber attack that knocked out some of the world\u2019s top websites has been called a \u201cstunning breach of global Internet stability,\u201d and is a reminder of how much of an issue cyber security has become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":38329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,1,4,5],"tags":[3190,594,4587,4586],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}