AfterVault: A Remedy for Ransomware ?
Here’s the bottom line: The information you put in AfterVault is not vulnerable to ransomware attacks on your computers.
Now let’s back up to the beginning and talk a bit about the details and caveats of that first statement.
Ransomware is malicious software that generally infects your computer through email attachments, infectious links in email, or file downloads. Once activated, the ransomware software encrypts the data on your computer which makes it impossible for you to access that data. The criminals behind this attack then demand payment, usually in the form of untraceable bitcoin, in return for unencrypting and thus restoring your data. Often, they do not follow through on this last part of the bargain and your data is never returned to you.
AfterVault’s good news is that the data you’ve put into AfterVault cannot be attacked by any ransomware on your computer. The bad news is that, unless you put all your vital data into your vault, AfterVault can do nothing to protect it.
Because you probably put only those documents that are vital to your family into AfterVault, you’ve probably not thought much about safely storing other data in your vault.
Let’s walk through how you might do this.
First, you might create a new vault. For illustration, let’s call it ‘Secure Data’. This will be where you will store this critical data.
Next, you’ll need to identify those items of information that are most important to you and upload that data to AfterVault. You can upload any spreadsheets, presentations, or files that are critical. You might even consider packaging some files into zipped files and uploading the zip file into your vault.
Probably the best category to use for this information is the ‘Documents and Photos’ section.
It’s unfortunate that pretty much everyone must now be constantly on their guard against these malicious software attacks and the criminals behind them. Hopefully, the software security community will someday produce convenient and transparent solutions that can make these thefts a thing of the past. In the meantime, for that data that you absolutely cannot afford to lose, use your secure and encrypted AfterVault vaults.