Better safe than sorry! Paragon Backup & Recovery 16 is out now!

Paragon Backup & Recovery 16 is an advanced backup and safeguarding software that enables private users to perform complex backup tasks with ease. Thanks to Backup and Recovery 16, there is absolutely no need for deep IT skills or advanced computing knowledge in order to protect files and folders, partitions, disks or even the entire system. Paragon Backup & Recovery makes PC protection child’s play.

Software wizards

Not sure which setting is most suitable? No need to worry! The powerful software wizards of Paragon Backup & Recovery 16 guide users step by step through the backup jungle – and the newly designed UI will clear the path!

~~$39,95~~Free download for a limited period!

Backup Job Wizard

The Backup Job wizard is the ultimate in automated backups. Thanks to intuitive presets, less than 8 clicks are needed to set automated backup jobs for the entire windows system, single files, folders or partitions.
However, advanced users get the full control at their hands and can refine and modify existing strategies or define custom ones.

Set-and-forget technology: continuous PC protection without questions
All backup technics: including incremental backup, file based backup, differential backup, full backup, backups of particular file types, backup to virtual hard disks…
Flexible scheduling: daily, hourly, weekly, monthly and even erratic schedules are possible (e.g. daily, every second week, not on Wednesdays and Fridays)
Powerful retention mechanism: automatically deletes older backups. Based on intuitive presets or manual definitions. Backup & Recovery automatically ensures that the most recent backup is always available.
Pinned backups: exclude single backups from the retention policy with a single click
And many more

Continue reading Better safe than sorry! Paragon Backup & Recovery 16 is out now!

Backup & Recovery 16

Paragon Backup & Recovery 16 is an easy-to-use system and data protection solution for Windows PCs. Thanks to its unique interface and user guidance, it is the perfect tool for both the fledgling PC user as well as the sophisticated PC professional. With Backup & Recovery 16, you can set complex backup routines quickly and easily like never before.

We would like to thank our customers who already use Paragon Backup & Recovery 15 and we offer a free upgrade for those until the 31. August 2016.

How Do I Get the Upgrade

To receive the upgrade, please login into your account and follow the instructions.
If it is the first time you log in into the new MyParagon Account, see our knowledge base for detailled information.

In the first step, we offer all our customers who have already bought Backup & Recovery 15 the possibility to get a free upgrade. This will be possible until the end of August 2016.

An extremely simple trick to keep your Mac or PC from unauthorized access

We frequently talk about recent security threats, including the new Trojan horse called “Locky” that encrypts your information forever, making it impossible to read.
Unfortunately, Locky is not the only virus that can cause problems for your operating system. There are many other types of viruses which can silently infiltrate a computer without you even noticing it. One of the most common and easiest ways of accessing your system is through an external flash or a hard drive.

There are a number of software solutions to help prevent such infection, as well as a radical and 100 percent secure hardware method. You can protect your USB ports from an unauthorized access for a short period of time simply by disabling the ports.

If you are using Windows…

All that you need is Notepad and an administrator-level account.

First, create a new document, then copy and paste the following text:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR]
”Start”=dword:00000004
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR\Enum]
”Count”=dword:00000000
”NextInstance”=dword:00000000

Save the file in the desired location and name it usboff.reg. Be sure to save it with the .reg extension and not .txt, or this trick will not work.

Now repeat the process, changing only two parts: in the line ”Start”=dword:00000004 change the 4 to a 3 , and then save a new file named usbon.reg.

Done!

Now when you want to disable the USB port, simply open the usboff.reg file and confirm the change. This will block any external drive plugged into your PC from working. As you might have guessed, opening and confirming the usbon.reg file will do just the opposite, once again enabling the USB port.
Assuming you are the only one with administrator-level access to the computer in question, no one will be able to change these files except you.

Now for the Mac

This trick is slightly more complicated than on Windows.
OS X 10.11 El Capitan brought with it an additional level of security for your Mac: System Integrity Protection (SIP), which prevents system-related files from modification. Even if you have an administrator-level account, you won’t be able to make changes to these files.

Apple’s new protection policy may have good intentions, but it clearly doesn’t help with our mission to disable USB.

NB! If you are using a USB keyboard or mouse, please don’t attempt this trick! You won’t be able to use these input devices, requiring an alternate method such as Bluetooth.

You can disable SIP by booting into recovery mode. Restart your Mac and hold Command+R as it boots.

From the menu, select Utilities > Terminal. In the Terminal window, type csrutil disable, press Enter, then restart your Mac.

To reenable SIP, launch Terminal while in Recovery mode, but this time type csrutil enable, then press Enter and restart.

But there’s an easier way – download and install the new Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac®, which provides, on top of other useful functions, one-click SIP disable feature.

When your SIP is disabled, do the following: open Finder and select Go -> Go to Folder from the menu. Copy and paste the /System/Library/Extensions path into the field and look for two files located there:

IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext
IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.KEXT

Move these files to the Desktop or other location, but be sure to keep them somewhere safe — you’ll need them to enable your USB ports again!

These small tricks can help you protect your information from being stolen or damaged. If you are interested in more advanced and useful features to protect your Mac, try our new Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac, a powerful disk management utility for OS X, featuring:

System Integrity Protection in OS X 10.11 El Capitan support;
Core Storage backup and restore;
Snapshot-driven backup;

Learn more about Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac

World Backup Day

Have you already backed up your data and memories? Today is the best day to think of it!

We do not force you to use the “The World Backup Day Pledge”

“I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.”

but we will give you a chance to make a really easy back up of your complete hard drive, single partitions or selected files and folders.

So we offer 100! Free Licenses of Backup & Recovery 15 Home on our Facebook page. All you have to do is to leave a comment on this posting

Most effective protection against the Locky Trojan horse – an up-to-date backup

Locky – a new Trojan horse that encrypts your files

It’s time to take caution because a new Trojan horse known as “Locky” is striking terror everywhere and is spreading like wildfire all over the internet. More and more infections have been reported in the past few days, especially in Germany – thousands of infections an hour, in fact! Like many other harmful programs, this Trojan horse also spreads via E-mail. Specifically, E-mails with infected Office documents attached are being sent to unsuspecting victims. These document contain a macro code which the Trojan horse installs as soon as the document is opened. The insidious trick here is that such documents are often passed off under the guise of an open invoice. The virus is now being spread by JScripts as well.
Once installed, the virus searches for certain file types which the developers of the virus assume to be private files of personal value, such as text documents and multi-media files. Files in accessible networks and cloud storages can also fall victim to the virus. These files are then encrypted by Locky so that the user can no longer open them. Instead, the user is demanded to pay the developers ransom money to decrypt the files. Unfortunately, there is no way at present to remove the virus from the system once it has been activated. As soon as you detect that Locky has infected your system, you should shut your system down as quickly as possible – even the rough way by pulling the plug on your computer. This way, you can at least prevent the Trojan horse from causing even more damage. You can then remove the virus with a disinfection CD and attempt to restore the encrypted files. However, this approach only works for files which Windows has made a “shadow copy” of. Unfortunately, Locky will also delete these files, which severely limits your chances of success.
That’s why it’s better to take preventative action so that you won’t even catch the virus in the first place. This means there are basic rules for protecting your system from external attacks (which you should already be following anyway).
Do not open file attachments on E-mails from senders you don’t know, and back up important files on a separate data medium. Make sure to keep your antivirus program up to date at all times. You should also update your operating system and other programs regularly, since these updates often close security loopholes which Trojan horses take advantage of.
Specifically for this virus, you can configure your MS Office not to run any macro code at all, or only to do so upon confirmation from you.
If you have already fallen victim to Locky, make sure to keep the encrypted files. Since the virus is quite new, there is no way to reverse the damage right now, but this may change over time. This makes it all the more important look for updates on a regular basis.

How can you protect yourself?

The only effective protection in a worst-case scenario is to have a backup on hand which can reliably restore your data. This is also recommended by the BSI (German Federal Office for Information Security).

Paragon Backup & Recovery

Backup & Recovery 15 Home — Backup & Recovery Home

That’s why we recommend our solution Backup & Recovery 14 Free Edition for personal backups.
You can get it for private use free-of-charge at www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/.
The expanded for-pay version of Backup & Recovery 15 Home can be had at a reduced price of just $19.95 (until March 15, 2016) as a single license, or as a family license (3 PCs in one household) for just $ 34.95.

Don’t wait: today is the best day for a backup!

Paragon Software boosts its top-rated Backup & Recovery 2014 Free edition with new enhanced features

The only free backup solution on the market to offer WinPE recovery surpasses 1 million downloads on Cnet, with millions of downloads on other major portals worldwide!

Newly updated Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free is the most advanced free backup and recovery tool available on the market. The top-ranked Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free edition has already been downloaded almost 1.5 million times from CNet.com and more than 1 million times from CHIP.de. Paragon Backup & Recovery Free has been ranked as one of the best free backup solutions by major IT media worldwide, including the UK’s PC Advisor.

The newest release has been enhanced with a WinPE boot media builder, a capability usually found only in commercial backup software. For the user’s convenience this feature requires no additional installation or registration. Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free is the only free backup and recovery tool on the market to deliver Recovery Media Builder with WinPE support allowing PC users to prepare either Linux or WinPE-based bootable environments.

Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free runs on schedule so that files are regularly backed up, and provides the option of saving space and time by only backing up data that has changed. Either way, file attributes and related information are preserved. Click to learn what’s new in the product.

Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free is available for download free of charge

Paragon Backup & Recovery 14 Home – safeguarding the data on your modern or old-school Windows PC

Faster, More Secure, Even More Reliable, and With Support for Virtualization and Microsoft’s Latest Operating System

Paragon Software releases Paragon Backup & Recovery 14 Home — the most reliable and essential backup and recovery tool for Windows PC users whether they are running Windows 8.1, Windows 2000, or something in between. The new edition comes with a host of new and enhanced features to meet the needs of the latest systems, including complete uEFI support, backup and recovery of BitLocker encrypted partitions (thus protecting PC users’ data from loss and unauthorized access), and the new pVHD (Paragon Virtual Hard Drive) format for faster and more reliable backup.

“Backup & Recovery 14 simplifies the most important part of data management – regular backups and bare metal recovery. Mobile users using BitLocker will enjoy the ability to image their laptops and have protection against both – data loss and unauthorized data access. The improved image file format provides stress-free backup experience – incremental backups run 10x faster when storing to,“ said Konstantin Komarov, CEO of Paragon Software Group.

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