Here is a news column featuring Alvaka/Noloki EVP and security expert, Kevin McDonald.

It’s a business owner’s worst nightmare.

You arrive for work, sit down at your computer and find that you can’t access any of your files because cyber criminals have encrypted them, locking them from being accessed by anyone but the hackers themselves. It’s a grim scenario, and it’s happening with increasing frequency as hackers seek to extort money from businesses.

Kevin McDonald has seen plenty of these attacks as president of Noloki, an Irvine-based information security firm. McDonald addressed the rise of cyberterrorism at an economic forum held Tuesday at Caltech’s Athenaeum Club. Sponsored by Technolink Association, the event featured experts on the global economy, the energy industry, intellectual property rights and more.

“Ransomware is basically a piece of malware that infects your computer, whether it’s locally or a network,” McDonald said. “That infection then goes to the command control center and pulls down an encryption tool that encrypts the local computer.”

And attacks like these can become even worse — if that local computer has rights to access other systems, it can encrypt them as well….

Click HERE to read the full story written by Kevin Smith.