"Travel Management Firm CWT, Pays 414 Bitcoin Ransom

CWT, one of the largest travel firm, has paid anonymous hackers 414 bitcoin (BTC) in ransom. Using a ransomware technology called Ragnar, the hackers managed to encrypt some two terabytes of files, leaving them inaccessible to employees. Originally demanding $10 million in bitcoin as ransom, CWT managed to bring the figure down to $4.5 million, citing the pandemic as reason to not have cash on hand."

In the last few years most AV companies added Anti-Ransomware modules to their packages, but it appears even at large companies some IT guys are unaware of that... and as we can see they also had issues with the backups.

So, while most of us here probably wouldn't make headlines after getting hit by some ransomware, but that would be still freakin annoying. For avoiding such mishaps take a look at some of the more affordable AV tools what offering ransomware protection:

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-ransomware-protection

Backing up your important stuff (and storing the backups offline) is also a good solution what can be enough on its own, but reinstalling the OS, all the apps and then restoring everything (and perhaps discovering that you forgot to backup something) would be still a pain in the back.

Not opening files what you got by email is also a good idea but honestly who can resist the promise of some funny cat videos or the possibility to see Bill Gates in mankini (not to mention some more mundane promises). Anyways thinking before opening stuff, and not clicking to every good looking links can help. BTW banks and tax authorities used to send letters instead of emails from a Googlemail addresses.

In summary if you want to be more or less safe and ransomware free, probably the best to use your head in the first place, then have some ransomware protection tools and finally regularly backup your most interesting stuff to something what you can keep offline.