Addison Ransomware Defense and Restoration Expertise

Ransomware has been widely adopted by cybercriminals and rogue states, posing a possibly lethal threat to businesses that fall victim. The latest variations of ransomware target all vulnerable resources, including online backup, making even selective restoration a challenging and costly exercise. Novel versions of ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Mailto (aka Netwalker), DopplePaymer, Conti and Nephilim have made the headlines, displacing Locky, Spora, and CryptoWall in notoriety, sophistication, and destructiveness.

Most ransomware infections come from innocent-seeming emails with dangerous links or attachments, and a high percentage are "zero-day" attacks that elude detection by legacy signature-matching antivirus (AV) tools. While user education and frontline detection are critical to protect against ransomware, best practices dictate that you assume some malware will inevitably get through and that you implement a solid backup solution that enables you to restore files and services rapidly with minimal damage.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Checkup is a low-cost service centered around an online interview with a Progent cybersecurity consultant skilled in ransomware protection and repair. In the course of this assessment Progent will collaborate directly with your Addison network management staff to gather pertinent information concerning your cybersecurity setup and backup environment. Progent will utilize this information to create a Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment documenting how to adhere to best practices for configuring and managing your security and backup systems to prevent or clean up after a ransomware assault.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment focuses on key areas associated with crypto-ransomware defense and restoration recovery. The report addresses:

Security

• Effective allocation and use of administration accounts
• Correct NTFS and SMB authorizations
• Optimal firewall setup
• Secure Remote Desktop Protocol access
• Advice about AntiVirus tools selection and configuration

• Split permission model for backup protection
• Protecting required servers including Active Directory
• Geographically dispersed backups with cloud backup to Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts or steals a victim's files so they are unusable or are made publicly available. Crypto-ransomware sometimes locks the victim's computer. To avoid the damage, the victim is required to send a specified amount of money (the ransom), usually in the form of a crypto currency such as Bitcoin, within a brief time window. It is never certain that paying the ransom will restore the lost files or prevent its publication. Files can be encrypted or deleted across a network depending on the target's write permissions, and you cannot break the strong encryption algorithms used on the compromised files. A typical ransomware delivery package is spoofed email, in which the target is tricked into interacting with by a social engineering technique known as spear phishing. This causes the email to appear to come from a familiar source. Another common attack vector is a poorly secured Remote Desktop Protocol port.

CryptoLocker opened the new age of crypto-ransomware in 2013, and the monetary losses caused by the many strains of ransomware is estimated at billions of dollars annually, more than doubling every other year. Famous attacks include Locky, and Petya. Current high-profile threats like Ryuk, Maze and TeslaCrypt are more sophisticated and have caused more havoc than earlier strains. Even if your backup/recovery processes permit you to recover your ransomed files, you can still be threatened by exfiltration, where stolen data are made public. Because new variants of ransomware crop up daily, there is no guarantee that conventional signature-matching anti-virus filters will block the latest attack. If threat does appear in an email, it is important that your end users have been taught to be aware of phishing tricks. Your last line of protection is a solid process for scheduling and keeping remote backups plus the deployment of reliable restoration platforms.

Contact Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Susceptibility Checkup in Addison
For pricing information and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Ransomware Susceptibility Consultation can bolster your protection against ransomware in Addison, phone Progent at 800-462-8800 or visit Contact Progent.