When ransomware first became big news, many major software companies provided free tools to try to get rid of ransomware infections on users’ computers.

Since then, however, ransomware has gone from being a minor nuisance to big business and has become much more sophisticated. A particular problem is that these days, cybercriminals use military-grade encryption, making a free remedy to remove large ransomware almost impossible.

As a result, ransomware remedies originally released by vendors such as Avast, Trendmicro, Bitdefender, and Kaspersky are becoming increasingly ineffective, and Bitdefender has even withdrawn from the market.

The sad truth today is that if you are suffering from a ransomware attack, although you can try a few of the tools below to counter it, you probably won’t be able to remove most of the ransomware that is now on the market.

However, there is some good news, the first of which is that ransomware has become much more targeted these days, so ordinary users are less likely to suffer from it. There are also privacy and security tools for regular users, such as free VPNs, that can help keep you safe online.

In addition, most of the best anti-virus and free anti-virus programs will have ransomware protection built in.

Also, for regular users who back up most imported files offline or online via cloud storage, chances are they can recover them if you access them from another computer…

It’s high time for businesses to have a full disaster recovery software platform to ensure that – if a ransomware attack gets past your existing endpoint security – you can at least recover everything you need from a recent or even real-time backup.

Overall, ransomware remains bad news, and its likelihood will get worse, and while we’ve tried to list the best tools to remove it, remember that it has limitations and that prevention is a much better strategy…

If you’re not already a victim of a ransomware attack and want to actively protect your PC, consider a dedicated prevention tool like ZoneAlarm Anti-Ransomware, which uses behavioral analysis to identify processes that act as ransomware – even if it’s not yet a specific known threat – and automatically backs up your files if it detects anything. It carries a subscription fee, so we didn’t include it in our main review, but $1.99 per month per PC is modest. The $1.99 per month per PC is a modest fee compared to the ransom fees charged by criminals.