You come into your office one morning and turn on the computer. Rather than the legal time and billing software display you expect, you see an ominous ticking clock next to a message that your hard drive will be locked in a matter of hours unless you wire hundreds of dollars to a suspicious address. Welcome to the world of ransomware.

Taking Your Computer Hostage

Ransomware is a type of malware that hides all of your files under an uncrackable password that will be provided only if you pay the criminals who create this software a ransom. Once your computer is infected, nothing can be done to remove the locks without the password. Modern encryption is effectively uncrackable so your local IT guru won’t be able to help.

So what should you do? If you pay the ransom you are rewarding the crooks, plus they often simply take your money and run. Untraceable bank accounts make these criminals hard to track. You can’t copy the files off, even if you install the hard drive on another computer, because the files themselves are encrypted. Traditional malware removal can’t help you since they may remove the infection, but your files are still locked. You better hope you backed up your computers recently.

Put Your Files In A Safe

Protect your sensitive documents the same way you protect your assets — by putting them in a vault of sorts, the cloud. Yes, the same cloud that has people worrying about the security of their files is actually safer than your own desktop computer, at least if you deal with a reputable cloud software provider.

CosmoLex law office software stores your critical practice billing information in professionally-managed datacenters. Those servers are protected by a level of digital security far in advance of anything you could possibly afford, just like money in a bank vault is better protected than money in your house. Ransomware is far less likely to find its way onto these servers, but even if they do you are still protected. Automatic, frequent backups ensure your data is safe and you will, at worst, lose only a few hours of information rather than your practice’s entire financial history.

Don’t let your law practice’s billing be taken hostage. Use CosmoLex legal billing software to keep your information safe from threats ranging from equipment failure to natural disasters to ransomware. Open an account today and get the peace of mind of professional security.