The Cerber family contributed to the largest number of ransomware attacks against enterprise systems in 2016, according to Microsoft research.
Of the myriad of ransomware attacks over the course of the year, Cerber accounted for 26% of these, some 2,114 infections on systems using Windows 10 Enterprise operating systems.
Cerber was found to be particularly active in November last year when attackers using the ransomeware strain ran a campaign against businesses taking advantage of the holiday season.
Microsoft has said that thanks to its robust threat protection, Windows 10 Enterprise is able to recognise Cerber attacks before payloads could be delivered, breaking the chain of self-replicating attacks that would normally compromise an entire system.
Through Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP), a bundled service which is otherwise a paid extra, enterprise customers are able to locate ‚patient zero‘ machines and stop a ransomware epidemic before it takes hold.
Cerber typically operates by tricking a user into downloading a document to their downloads folder from an email.
