Protect yourself from Ransomware with SyncBack Touch

Author: Kostas Tsakiridis, 2BrightSparks Pte. Ltd.

Ransomware has become an increasing menace affecting private users and businesses each day. As we have already described in another article titled Ransomware - how to protect yourself the best way to be prepared and protect your data is by performing regular backups to offsite locations, preferably to computers that are purely used for data storage.

An alternative solution to storing data offsite (similarly to locations such as cloud and FTP) is to install SyncBack Touch on your remote computers/devices running Windows, macOS, Linux or Android so you can store your data on them by using SyncBackPro/SE.

If you are not familiar with the concept of SyncBack Touch then you can read about it on our website which provides more details, usage examples, download links plus an introduction video for the product.

Once you have installed it on the target computer/device you will have to ensure that the instance of SyncBack Touch is accessible for SyncBackPro/SE to be able to communicate with it. In our article titled Configuring SyncBack Touch to backup files over the Internet we describe the steps needed in order to achieve this.

Creating a SyncBackPro/SE profile targeting your SyncBack Touch is very easy and like creating other profile types. Our article titled Creating a SyncBack Touch profile describes the step by step creation of such a profile. If you are using SyncBackPro/SE V10 (or newer) then you can also configure SyncBack Touch to detect ransomware on the device it is installed on.

Using Security against ransomware

SyncBack Touch uses a proprietary interface for its communication protocol plus all data transmission is encrypted, so it is highly unlikely that anyone can connect to it unless using SyncBackPro/SE. Therefore, it is best to set authentication to ensure that only your instance of SyncBackPro/SE can connect to it.

Once you have everything installed properly, and you have tested and verified that SyncBackPro/SE can communicate with SyncBack Touch without problems, then you may consider adding an extra layer of security by setting SyncBack Touch to require authentication before allowing a connection.

By default, SyncBack Touch doesn’t require authentication which may be fine if you are using it within a local network which is protected from the outside by a firewall but it is strongly recommended to set authentication for instances of SyncBack Touch that are running at offsite locations accessible via the internet.

SyncBack Touch can be configured in three different ways in regard to authentication:

1. It can be configured to simply accept a user defined password. SyncBackPro/SE will connect to the device and provide that password. If the password is correct, then it can use the device. By default, the password is blank and is ideal for home use and is available to both SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro.


2. It can be configured to connect to a remote SyncBack Management Service (SBMS) and verify that the username and password supplied by SyncBackPro is correct. This is ideal for business/enterprise use as the usernames and passwords are centrally managed. SyncBackSE cannot use this option since only SyncBackPro can use SBMS.


3. SyncBack Touch can be installed to allow impersonation. This means SyncBackPro connects using the usernames and passwords of Windows accounts on the computer SyncBack Touch is running on. This is also ideal for business/enterprise use as the usernames and passwords are the same Windows usernames and passwords that are already used by users on their Windows computers. This also adds an extra layer of security because when SyncBackPro connects to it then they only have access to the files and folders on the SyncBack Touch device that Windows allows them access to. This option is not available to SyncBackSE.

Conclusion

SyncBack Touch is a viable, reliable and secure alternative solution to ransomware protection. And one that is owned and managed entirely by the user.

SyncBackPro/SE V10 (and newer) users can use SyncBack Touch for free, so there is no excuse not to give it a try and discover the advantages of using SyncBack Touch.