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Technology

Stop Ransomware In It’s Tracks

Today we are going to review a brilliant tool that stops ransomware and other spam in its tracks. It’s called Sendio Opt-Inbox, and it’s more than just antivirus and spam filtering; it’s all of that combined with two-factor authentication, meaning that if anyone sends you an email, a human has to verify that they sent that email to you.

Sendio
Sendio Anti Ransomware Protection

This nifty tool is different because it completely filters out mass email attacks. Ransomware is a numbers game; large scale attacks use automated systems to send out thousands of emails, knowing that some portion of those emails will inevitably succeed. However, hackers and their automated systems do not account for any kind of authentication process.

When you sign up for Sendio, you are opting to re-route your mail through their system. This allows them to run a series of scans on the email and check the IP address to see if the email is coming from a trusted source. Before Sendio hands off the email to you, the sender will go through the “Sender Address Verification SAV” process or their email won’t be delivered. This means that someone actually has to tell Sendio “It’s okay, I’m a real person and I want to have a conversation with the addressee.” Sendio makes sure that you are only having meaningful conversations with people who you want to talk to.

What about automated emails, like newsletters, that you voluntarily subscribe to? Sendio takes this one step further: you can not only choose to trust certain newsletters, but also choose when these emails get sent to your inbox.

Is this new fancy widget expensive, or even worth the extra cost? The starting price is $34 per month, and the pricing changes depending on whether you have Sendio host the application for you, or if you host it on your own network. You can run a quick cost-benefit analysis to see if an application like Sendio would be cost effective for you and your organization. Go to the store and get a cheap stop watch, and click the stopwatch every time you sort through junk mail. Do this for a month, and you will see how much time you could save sorting through junk mail alone. Multiply this estimate by the number of employees in your company, and you can see that a product like Sendio is easily worth the price. Beyond the amount of sheer time saved, you can assume increased productivity, and thus an additional capacity to increase revenue. Furthermore, a product like Sendio could save you countless amounts of time, money, and data loss by preventing ransomware attacks.

It sounds great, but are there any downsides to this magical tool? Unfortunately, no tools on the market are 100% foolproof. Potentially, if you are subject to a highly targeted attack, the attacker could manually go through the verification process, assuming that Sendio hasn’t already flagged their domain or IP address for fraudulent behavior. However, with the high volume of fraudulent emails sent out by hackers every day, it seems improbable for hackers to find an effective way around this new gateway.

Ransomware has caused too many executives and management sleepless nights and it is time for a system that can help you take back your peace of mind. Talk to your IT partner about implementing Sendio across your network. Get you time back, become more efficient, and most importantly, get a few more hours of sleep!

Categories
Technology

How Windows 10 Protects You From Ransomware

Microsoft is making improvements slowly but surely to help protect you from ransomware. In the second major update released for Windows 10, Microsoft has started plugging a lot of holes that leave you vulnerable to an attack. Microsoft claimed that no Windows 10 users were affected by the recent WannaCry strain of ransomware and remarked further that there are no known strains of ransomware that could affect the Windows 10 operating system.

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This may sound like a good time to breathe a sigh of relief. However, it didn’t take long for hackers to rise to Microsoft’s challenge. It only took three hours for a white cap hacker to find his way past Microsoft’s security. That being said, Windows 10 is a vast improvement over previous versions of the Windows operating systems. What is apparent is that Microsoft realizes the pains that its users are feeling with the onslaught of ransomware attacks and they are working hard to come up with a secure solution.
The list of improvements that Microsoft has made to Windows 10 is too long to list. For a company that is looking to be preventative in the approach to the ransomware threat, one of the most important investments you can make is in updating your computer operating systems to Windows 10 company wide. The vast majority of ransomware infections start at the end user level through some form of social engineering scam. Microsoft is dumping all of their time and attention into Windows 10 to overcome this challenge. If your network is comprised of mostly Windows 8 operating systems or older, understand that this will become an increasing threat to your business as more threats are created for the unprotected operating systems. If you would like more information about how you can protect your company from ransomware, contact eTop today!

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