Protecting against Ransomware

[mc2fool]

The point is that you can go back to any version of your files at least 30 days, so you can recover from the ransomware attack as long as you realise you have been attacked within 30 days

With DropBox specifically? That seems an excellent solution then!

Google Drive and Sync.com also have version histories.

Google Drive says that file version are only kept for 30 days and no more than 100 version are kept for any file, and on checking mine that seems to be the case.

Sync.com says that free customers can access 30 days of version history and pro/business customers 365 days with unlimited revisions. However on checking mine, in particular a file that changes at least once a day and often more, I have 999 versions going back to April 2018. I'm a free customer.

I see that OneDrive apparently also has version histories but as I don't use it myself I can't check up on the reality.

[scrumpyjack]

With the free cloud accounts just be careful about shifting goal posts on the features front as they try and edge you into the 'advantages' of paying...
I have a few free Dropbox accounts which I use for a small number of shared documents and they changed the maximum number of registered client devices from five to three. Not a catastrophe but I was already at five so a bit of a pain.

Mine is a paid for Dropbox subscription as I wanted the large storage limit. I had been a free one for years but it was the cut in the number of linked PCs that pushed me to go for the paid version as well as the storage limit. Well worth £98 a year, even if one can scrape by of freebees for a while.

[Watis]

I had relied on Dropbox for a while, with a 5GB limit. Fine for my most important documents but insufficient for photos. However I have always found the user interface to be rather clunky - and still do, having opened it now, and can't see how much free space I have left.

This year, I bit the bullet and subscribed to Microsoft 365. So Mrs Watis and I each get 1TB of storage on OneDrive, plus the Office apps, for £80 per annum. This price covers up to 6 people. For a single user, the price is £60.

Watis

[UncleEbenezer]

I think the only 100% safe way to protect is to have a series of historical backups that are physically disconnected from your PC.

Even so I think the 80/20 rule applies here. Or it might even be 95/5 in this case.

I'd agree with that. The only way to get 100% safety would be not to expose yourself to risk in the first place, and that's tinfoil-hat territory.

Even a series of physically disconnected historical backups has its limitations. Suppose the ransomware anticipates a backup strategy, and as part of its action, encrypts each backup as you make it. Before zero-day, it also silently decrypts on restore. Then after zero-day, when you need that backup, it costs you the same ransom.

Not at all beyond the bounds of possibility: it's the kind of scenario you have to consider if your work involves security. More sophisticated (albeit different) attacks have happened in real life: Stuxnet or Pegasus, to name but two.