The No More Ransom project has prevented ransomware groups from making money from attacks by using free decryption tools.

The No More Ransom portal offers 121 free ransomware decryption tools, which can decrypt 151 ransomware families, helping more than six million ransomware victims to restore their encrypted files for free.

The project, led by Europol, the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands’ police, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Kaspersky and McAfee, was launched five years ago and has grown to around 170 law enforcement, cybersecurity and academic partners.

This has saved victims from paying close to a billion dollars to cybercriminals and disrupted the ability of ransomware groups to profit from their attacks.

Now marking its fifth year, the site has been updated to be more user-friendly, with up-to-date information about ransomware as well as advice on how to prevent a ransomware infection – both for normal and for business users.

An important piece of advice is to make regular backups of data so that in case of a ransomware attack, the network can be restored in the least disruptive way with the latest available data.

No More Ransom also suggests that software and operating systems are kept up to date with the latest security patches to prevent cybercriminals from attacking known vulnerabilities and carrying out ransomware attacks.

It also proposes that corporate networks and remote desktop protocol (RDP) services be secured with multifactor authentication to create an additional barrier that makes it more difficult for cybercriminals to access their own network.

No More Ransom strongly advises victims not to pay the ransomware groups, no matter what happens. Not only because there is no reason to trust that ransomware gangs provide a legitimate decryption key, but the payment also shows that ransomware works, whereby further attacks are encouraged.

For more information, read the original story in ZDNet.