Recover Ransomware affected files with OneDrive and Windows Defender

The last few years have witnessed quite a lot of Ransomware attacks. Many people all around the globe lost their valuable data to these malicious pieces of software. Also, a few of them ended up paying some amount of money to get their data back. In this post, we will not talk about an antivirus or some sort of ransomware protection. But we will talk about taking precautionary measures using the cloud storage provided to you by OneDrive.

Recover Ransomware affected files using OneDrive

OneDrive is an outstanding personal cloud storage provider. And it can be well used as a protective guard on your valuable data. A Windows computer, Office 365 Home/Personal or OneDrive Business and a good internet connection is all you need. All these components fit together to form a mechanism that guards your files against ransomware attacks.

All Office 365 Home and Personal Subscriptions come with a feature that maintains a history of your files until 30 days. So, if you are attacked by ransomware, you can always revert your files back to their state before the attack. Remember that all your files in the cloud are using enterprise-grade security systems and your data is kept under secure conditions always.

And all of this integrates very well with Windows Defender. Once Windows Defender detects a ransomware threat and removes it completely, it will give you options to recover your files from an unaffected state preserved in the cloud. This feature has helped a lot of people in recovering their lost data. And it is convenient as well. You just need to ensure that the file was uploaded to your cloud once before you were attacked.

Other than that, you can also enable Controlled Folder Access under Ransomware Protection in Windows Defender Security Centre. It will protect your files and folders from being accessed by third-party unfriendly apps.

To make sure you are protected against ransomware, all you need to do is set up OneDrive on your computer. And make sure you make backups for your important files. The history will be well preserved until 30 days. If you are affected, Windows Defender will take it up and recover your files without much fuss. This can save you a lot of time and money in some cases.

OneDrive and Windows Defender prove to be a strong combination. Although it is not a full-proof prevention mechanism but a remedial mechanism for sure. Also having your files on OneDrive gives you added benefits like access to your files from anywhere in this world.

Related read: Use OneDrive Files Restore to recover Ransomware locked files.