Acronis has announced its involvement in the No More Ransom initiative, joining a consortium of other businesses to fight ransomware and contributing its intelligence to prevent attacks happening.

Acronis will become a supporting partner of the scheme, using its knowledge of the ransomware space to contribute essential information about the steps businesses should take to protect themselves and their customers. Part of its role will also be promoting the damage ransomware can do to around the world.

“Protecting our customers’ data is our top priority and in the current environment it also means we need protect the data from ransomware,” Nikolay Grebennikov, Acronis VP of engineering said.

“Just having a backup is no longer enough. Realising that restoring data from a backup helps people to avoid paying the ransom, cyber criminals began attacking backup files and backup software.”

The No More Ransom scheme was announced last year by the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Dutch police, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Kaspersky and Intel Security (now McAfee). Its main quest was to decrypt victims’ computers without them having to pay when they’re hit by a ransomware attack, but now it’s grown into something much more useful to both consumers and businesses.

“Fighting ransomware is all about prevention and education,” John Zanni, Acronis’ CMO added. “By joining the No More Ransom initiative we support our partners and law enforcement agencies in the fight against cyber extortionists.

“Working together will enable us to run effective education campaigns and help our users take a stand against these damaging cyber-attacks without losing data or paying the ransom.”