Earlier we posted about a new security tool called Bitdefender Anti-Ransomware which works in the background to prevent your files getting encrypted by one of the ransomware variants. While Bitdefender has designed this free tool to be extremely easy to use for all the users, there is another similar tool called WinAntiRansom that has been released recently which proposes to “declare war on ransomware” and makes a large number of options available to the users. WinAntiRansom is designed by the same folks who have been making WinPatrol for a number of years. Unlike Bitdefender Anti-ransomware which is free for everyone, WinAntiRansom is a commercial software.
WinAntiRansom is different from other anti-ransomware tools as it does not focus on a particular family of ransomware, rather it offers to lock down your PC against all possible ransomware threats. It scans your PC for all the programs installed and automatically sets all the recognized programs to a whitelist. Any new software that you install is also given the same treatment and is either whitelisted or blocked. You can of course manually make changes to this whitelist later on.
WinAntiRansom claims to provide security in multiple layers – Pre-emptive action (designed to block any possible ransomware before it can do any damage), SafeZone (a user defined list of files and folders that are kept safe from unknown programs not in the whitelist), Network Lockdown (programs that are not on whitelist are denied access to files available via network share) and Protected Registry Actions (Windows’ registry access is denied for non-recognized programs).
While this approach of the layered security seems to work perfectly well for all the advanced users, it could be a little bit overwhelming for the average PC user. But in the end, what matters most is whether you are protected from ransomware threats or not.
You can download WinAntiRansom from https://www.winpatrol.com/winantiransom/.