Ransomware is a type of malware that blocks users from accessing their
computers or personal files and demands the payment of a ransom to regain
access to them and/or prevent data leakage.
Ransomware attacks are dramatically increasing in number and frequency
year over year, with high-impact, headline-making incidents continuously
growing in volume and scope.
In addition to anti-malware protection, your Panda product provides a specific
barrier against this type of attack: Anti-Ransomware protection, which
consists of three security modules:
Data Shield
Data Shield is the best barrier against malware (ransomware) that tries
to hijack or encrypt our users' sensitive data, preventing access to that
information from any application not considered safe by our experts. This
protection enables you to configure the paths where sensitive data is
stored, the applications that can access those locations, and the action
to take if a non-whitelisted application tries to access that information
(ask or block).
Decoy Files
Decoy Files are used as bait on computers. They enable your Panda product
to monitor whether specific files deployed by our solutions are modified.
If an attacker tries to overwrite any of these files, an event is sent
to our behavioral detection engine which, with the information provided
by other detection technologies integrated in the protection engine, determines
whether the process that is trying to modify the Decoy Files is ransomware,
eliminating the threat and preventing the encryption of the file on the
computer.
Shadow Copies
Many ransomware attacks go a step further and, in addition to encrypting
files, try to destroy all types of backup copies created by customers.
With your Panda product, you can create backup copies by leveraging the
technology included in your computer operating system. The product will
protect them so you can recover your information in the event of a ransomware
infection. Unlike other solutions that take up a lot of disk space, Shadow
Copies are optimized so they save only the differences from a previous
Shadow Copy. Therefore, the chances that you run out of disk space are
minimal. Your Panda product enables you to configure the percentage of
disk space dedicated to Shadow Copies, although the 10% allocated by default
should be sufficient in most cases.