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Ransomware: how Collin County businesses actually get hit

6 min read·By William Edwards, Lead Engineer·Updated June 2026·37 Forge · McKinney TX

Ransomware rarely arrives as a dramatic hack. For most Collin County businesses it starts with something mundane: a phishing email, a reused password, or an exposed remote-access port.

The common entry points

What it actually costs

The ransom is often the smallest line item. The real cost is downtime, days of stalled operations, lost revenue, emergency IT, and the cleanup of restoring systems and rebuilding trust.

The defenses that work

No single tool stops ransomware; layers do. MFA and email filtering block the way in, EDR catches what gets through, least-privilege limits the spread, and immutable, tested backups mean you can recover without paying. The goal is simple: be a harder target than the next business on the list.

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