best protection is rotating backups of your important data.
say like using 3 or more usb drives (hard drives, not thumb drives.. more reliable imo) that can hold all your important stuff. everyday, backup to one drive, then unplug it for the rest of the day.
on another, do the same once a week, keeping it unplugged the rest of the time.
on a third, once a week (different day though) and keep that one off site as well as off line. this one works better with two drives that you swap to your safe deposit box or something.
so, one day it hits. you should have the previous days good backup on one drive. if it was a "creeping" type of infection that got some of the previous days backup you still have a backup from last week.
and the 3rd offsite backup protects from house fires/floods as well.
you can go as elaborate as you want.
point is, you should NEVER have only one copy of important data. so if you get hit, just wipe the infected computer and restore from a known good backup. and TEST that backup regularly.
macrium reflect free is a good imaging backup program. its free for home use. images the whole drive(s) including the OS. you can be back up and running in minutes. well, a hour.