Adelaide Ransomware Defense and Restoration Consulting

Ransomware has been weaponized by cybercriminals and malicious governments, posing a potentially existential risk to businesses that are successfully attacked. Current variations of ransomware target everything, including online backup, making even partial recovery a challenging and expensive exercise. Novel variations of ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, Phobos, Snatch and Egregor have made the headlines, displacing Locky, TeslaCrypt, and Petya in notoriety, sophistication, and destructive impact.

Most ransomware penetrations come from innocent-seeming emails with malicious hyperlinks or attachments, and many are so-called "zero-day" strains that elude the defenses of traditional signature-matching antivirus tools. While user training and frontline detection are important to protect against ransomware, best practices dictate that you take for granted some malware will eventually get through and that you implement a solid backup solution that enables you to recover quickly with little if any losses.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Vulnerability Checkup is a low-cost service centered around a remote interview with a Progent cybersecurity consultant experienced in ransomware defense and repair. In the course of this assessment Progent will work directly with your Adelaide IT management staff to gather pertinent information about your security configuration and backup environment. Progent will utilize this information to create a Basic Security and Best Practices Report documenting how to follow leading practices for implementing and administering your security and backup solution to prevent or clean up after a ransomware attack.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment focuses on vital issues related to ransomware defense and restoration recovery. The review addresses:

Security

• Effective allocation and use of administration accounts
• Appropriate NTFS and SMB permissions
• Proper firewall setup
• Secure RDP access
• Recommend AntiVirus (AV) tools selection and configuration

• Split permission model for backup protection
• Protecting key servers such as Active Directory
• Offsite backups with cloud backup to Microsoft Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a variety of malicious software that encrypts or deletes files so they cannot be used or are publicized. Crypto-ransomware often locks the victim's computer. To avoid the carnage, the victim is required to pay a certain amount of money (the ransom), typically via a crypto currency like Bitcoin, within a short period of time. There is no guarantee that paying the extortion price will restore the damaged data or avoid its exposure to the public. Files can be encrypted or deleted throughout a network depending on the target's write permissions, and you cannot reverse engineer the strong encryption algorithms used on the hostage files. A common ransomware attack vector is tainted email, in which the user is tricked into interacting with by a social engineering exploit called spear phishing. This makes the email message to appear to come from a familiar sender. Another popular vulnerability is a poorly protected Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) port.

The ransomware variant CryptoLocker opened the modern era of ransomware in 2013, and the monetary losses caused by different strains of ransomware is said to be billions of dollars annually, more than doubling every other year. Famous examples include WannaCry, and NotPetya. Recent high-profile threats like Ryuk, Sodinokibi and CryptoWall are more elaborate and have wreaked more havoc than earlier versions. Even if your backup procedures permit your business to recover your encrypted files, you can still be hurt by exfiltration, where ransomed data are exposed to the public (known as "doxxing"). Because additional variants of ransomware are launched every day, there is no guarantee that traditional signature-based anti-virus tools will block the latest attack. If an attack does appear in an email, it is important that your end users have learned to identify social engineering tricks. Your last line of defense is a sound scheme for performing and retaining offsite backups and the use of dependable recovery tools.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Susceptibility Audit in Adelaide
For pricing details and to learn more about how Progent's ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Preparedness Consultation can enhance your protection against crypto-ransomware in Adelaide, phone Progent at 800-462-8800 or see Contact Progent.