I keep reading about all these ransomware attacks where victims paid, because they didn't have backups.

Here's a thought:

Run regular backups.

It's not hard, nor is it expensive. Certainly cheaper that paying crypto ransom.

Automated nightly backups to local and/or off-site storage can be handled by any number of easy-to-run utilities.

Run monthly backups to optical media. Quality discs are reliable for decades. You can't say that about hard drives or tape.

#cososec

@voltronic 100% agree - I'm sure the more technically minded folks would help anyone here to do this if they get stuck. 🙂

@Mandypar @voltronic In the case of macOS if there’s enough space on the boot drive, the last couple of OS versions have been making automatic system snapshots every hour for 24 hours before starting a new daily cycle. So if you’re quick enough to spot a ransomware attack, you can use one of those as a restore point.

@peemee
That's a cool feature. It does this on a separate partition, I hope?

@Mandypar

@voltronic @Mandypar No, it’s in a hidden part of the System but each snapshot is in it’s own secure container under the new APple File System (APFS) that replaced the elderly HFS+ structure. The controlling software to access backups, local, external & online is on a separate partition, though.

@peemee
I would definitely move the backup to another partition, or better yet, a separate drive.

@Mandypar

@voltronic @peemee @Mandypar Better yet, off network. Those ransomware Trojans can get into almost anything local.