28 May 25 Hot Anti-Ransomware Companies To Watch In 2020

Who’s who in the fight against the fastest growing cybercrime

– Steve Morgan, Editor-in-Chief

Northport, N.Y. – May 28, 2020

Ransomware has gone nuclear, according to KnowBe4.

Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global ransomware damage costs will reach $20 billion by 2021 — which is 57X more than it was in 2015. This makes ransomware the fastest growing type of cybercrime.

We estimated that there would be a ransomware attack on businesses every 14 seconds by the end of 2019, and every 11 seconds by 2021. This does not include attacks on individuals, which occurs even more frequently than businesses.

In response to this rapidly growing threat, the editors at Cybercrime Magazine have compiled a list of hot companies who develop anti-ransomware tools, platforms, and services.

The Ransomware 25

What leading cyber defenders have to say about ransomware, and what they’re doing to protect organizations from it. Some consumer apps are also featured.

• Acronis – Nearly 40 percent of the victims who pay the ransom never get their data back — which is why everyone must protect against ransomware. Acronis Active Protection actively protects all of the data on your systems, including documents, media files, programs, and more — even your Acronis Backup Files.
• Agari – Ransomware attacks can shut down networks, cripple financial systems, and incapacitate government services. Agari’s phishing defense solution stops sophisticated identity deception threats including business email compromise, executive spoofing, and account takeover-based attacks.
• Arcserve – Ransomware has become the biggest risk to business. Arcserve’s data and ransomware protection was designed to meet the demands of today’s IT by removing standalone, discrete products while delivering proven, all-in-one cybersecurity, backup, and disaster recovery (DR).
• Avast – New and improved ransomware floods the internet daily, but Avast upgrades its software every few minutes to keep you ahead of the tide. Avast’s free anti-ransomware tool for iOS, Android, and PC stops dangerous ransomware and other types of threats before they can harm your files.
• AVG – Even after paying a ransom, there is no guarantee that you will be able to recover your files. AVG Internet Security keeps hackers and ransom seekers away. It prevents your personal photos, documents, and files from being modified, deleted, or encrypted by ransomware attacks.

Cybercrime TV: KnowBe4, The Making of a Unicorn

Training employees on cybersecurity protects against ransomware

• Avira – Imagine paying a ransom to access your own system. Avira’s premium anti-ransomware detects behavioral clues and stops even unknown mutations before they attack. You can rest assured that your files won’t be altered, encrypted, or deleted. Also provides anti-virus protection and stops phishing attacks.
• Barracuda – Cybercriminals use every vector they can to get into your network — from email and texting to app and network traffic, often using social engineering to trick their way in. Detect ransomware and other advanced threats using Barracuda multi-layer scanning technologies including sandbox analysis.
• Bitdefender – Ransomware has quickly become one of the most infectious and feared threats in business environments. As an adaptive layered security solution, Bitdefender GravityZone provides multiple anti-ransomware capabilities, having all its layers work together for prevention, detection and remediation.
• Blackberry – Ransomware threat actors are becoming increasingly adept at exploiting vulnerable system services and unpatched operating systems to launch their attacks. Cylance’s services include protective prevention and readiness, and incident response rapid containment and risk reduction around ransomware attacks.
• Check Point – Ransomware strikes without warning. It penetrates your organization through the web, email, or removable media devices. Check Point’s anti-ransomware solution defends organizations against the most sophisticated ransomware attacks, and safely recovers encrypted data, ensuring business continuity and productivity.
• Cisco – Ransomware penetrates organizations in multiple ways, so fighting it requires more than one product. Cisco ransomware defense products provide ransomware protection from the DNS layer to email to the endpoint. And their solution is backed by industry-leading Talos threat research.
• Crowdstrike – Ransomware is not new and an exponential growth curve has made it a pervasive threat to end users. Because attackers can and will shift their techniques, CrowdStrike’s next-generation endpoint protection solution, CrowdStrike Falcon, uses an array of complementary prevention and detection methods.
• ExtraHop – The average ransomware strain waits inside a compromised system for 200 days before attacking. Reveal(x) detects ransomware activity as soon as it hits your network so you can immediately quarantine affected systems and access deep analytics going back months to understand the true source and scope of an incident.
• F-Secure – Police-themed ransomware tries to scare the user into believing they need to pay a fine for committing a crime of some sort. In most cases, F-Secure’s free online scanner removal tool is able to remove police-themed ransomware, restoring normal access to the system and files.
• Kaspersky – Don’t be a victim, ransomware attacks someone every 5 seconds. The new, improved Kaspersky anti-ransomware tool is free. This lightweight tool uses cloud-assisted behavior detection, to scan and block ransomware and crypto-malware immediately. Versions for home and businesses.
• KnowBe4 – Ransomware Has Gone Nuclear, How Can You Avoid Becoming The Next Victim? KnowBe4’s free Ransomware Simulator “RanSim” gives you a quick look at the effectiveness of your existing network protection. RanSim provides 100 percent harmless simulation of real ransomware and cryptomining infections.

Cybercrime TV: Humans are the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain

KnowBe4 explains the importance of training employees to be cyber safe

• Malwarebytes – Traditional antivirus fails because it’s slow to react to new threats. And, well, because it’s “dumb.” Malwarebytes’ ransomware mitigation detects and blocks ransomware from encrypting files by using signature-less behavioral monitoring technology.
• McAfee – Ransomware will install on your system, and encrypt or damage data on your system in a way that in many cases is irrecoverable unless you have a decryption key. McAfee’s free Ransomware Recover (Mr2) framework can unlock user files, applications, databases, applets, and other objects encrypted by ransomware.
• Mimecast – Don’t be a ransomware statistic. The Mimecast ransomware protection solution tackles ransomware with a layered cyber resilience solution, bringing together data protection, business continuity, archiving, and recovery capabilities for your email from a single cloud solution.
• NeuShield – Traditional ransomware protection is able to detect and block known malware and viruses. Even with constant updates, however, it’s often not effective in stopping new or unknown attacks. NeuShield Data Sentinel is different. It goes deep into your system to recover data — no matter how or why the data was changed.
• Sonicwall – Ransomware is too lucrative to fade away. Eliminate ransomware with advanced multi-layered security services, including endpoint security, next-gen firewall services, email security and secure mobile access. Eradicate known, new and updated ransomware variants, and roll back endpoints to their prior clean state.
• Sophos – Ransomware keeps evolving, getting faster, smarter — and costlier — at every turn. Sophos’ anti-ransomware educational toolkit for IT managers gives organizations free resources to train their users on ransomware, including an organizational checklist, security awareness posters, and an educational video for employees.
• The Kure – Anti-virus software is no match for a ransomware attack. Hackers get around it in their sleep. The Kure’s patented method protects your data so if ransomware happens to get in, you simply reboot and your PC is fully restored. The Kure was developed by Centurion Technologies.
• Trend Micro – Crypto Ransomware is a type of ransomware that encrypts files making them unusable by the user. To regain access, victims are asked to pay a ransom. Trend Micro’s free decryption tool decrypts certain variants of crypto ransomware, so you don’t have to pay up.
• VMware Carbon Black – Today’s ransomware goes beyond simple file encryption and increasingly leverages unknown variants and file-less techniques. VMware Carbon Black’s cloud endpoint protection provides all types of ransomware on all endpoints. AppControl is the strongest ransomware protection for servers and critical systems.

Educating the world’s online population of more than 4.5 billion people — which is projected to reach 6 billion people by 2022 — on how to spot and react to spear-phishing emails is the next best thing to giving them ransomware vaccinations.

KnowBe4, developers of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is one step ahead of most anti-ransomware vendors. The newly minted cybersecurity unicorn has built up a massive business around training employees how not to click on phony messages (which are often seemingly authentic) that infect all types of computing devices with ransomware.

Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that cybercrime will cost the world in excess of $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015. Ransomware is expected to worsen and make up a proportionately larger share of total cybercrime by 2021. Training employees is the big variable, and the potential big gainer in cutting down ransomware damage costs.

– Steve Morgan is founder and Editor-in-Chief at Cybersecurity Ventures.

Go here to read all of my blogs and articles covering cybersecurity. Go here to send me story tips, feedback and suggestions.

Sponsored by KnowBe4

KnowBe4 is the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform that helps you manage the ongoing problem of social engineering.

Is your network effective in blocking ransomware when employees fall for social engineering attacks?

KnowBe4’s free Ransomware Simulator “RanSim” gives you a quick look at the effectiveness of your existing network protection.

RanSim will simulate 18 ransomware infection scenarios and 1 cryptomining infection scenario and show you if a workstation is vulnerable.