Cybereason has released RansomFree, a free anti-ransomware tool for Windows.

The program uses behaviour monitoring to watch your system for ransomware-like actions, detecting and suspending any malicious process once encryption starts.

RansomFree is exceptionally easy to install and use. There are no setup options, no scheduling tools, no lists of drives or folders: you just install the program and leave it to do its work.

The developer says RansomFree works in part by adding “specially crafted files” to your system drive. We noticed, for example, a couple of new Documents subfolders containing files of various target types (images, Office documents).

RansomFree is a true “set and forget” tool. You can read an “About” box, but that’s essentially it

Presumably these dummy files are intended to act as a buffer: ransomware encrypts them first, giving RansomFree time to detect what’s going on before any real files are lost.

Cybereason says RansomFree’s detection algorithm is based on analysis of more than 40 ransomware strains, and a very quick first test suggests it will block most of the major threats.

How long this protection will last is difficult to say. We suspect ransomware authors will quickly find ways to detect, disable or bypass RansomFree entirely. But even if that happened, and Cybereason never update the program again, it’ll still offer capable protection against older threats, and that’s more than enough to justify the download. Check it out.

RansomFree is available now for Windows 7 and later.