Akron Ransomware Filtering and Recovery Expertise

Ransomware has been weaponized by cyber extortionists and rogue governments, posing a possibly existential risk to companies that are successfully attacked. The latest variations of ransomware target all vulnerable resources, including online backup, making even selective restoration a long and expensive exercise. Novel variations of crypto-ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Mailto (aka Netwalker), DopplePaymer, Conti and Egregor have made the headlines, displacing WannaCry, Spora, and NotPetya in prominence, elaborateness, and destructiveness.

90% of crypto-ransomware penetrations come from innocent-seeming emails that have malicious hyperlinks or file attachments, and many are so-called "zero-day" strains that can escape detection by traditional signature-based antivirus (AV) filters. While user training and frontline identification are important to protect against ransomware, leading practices dictate that you take for granted some attacks will eventually succeed and that you put in place a solid backup mechanism that enables you to restore files and services rapidly with minimal losses.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Report is an ultra-affordable service built around an online discussion with a Progent security consultant skilled in ransomware defense and repair. In the course of this interview Progent will cooperate directly with your Akron network management staff to collect critical information about your security profile and backup processes. Progent will use this data to create a Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment detailing how to apply leading practices for implementing and managing your cybersecurity and backup systems to block or clean up after a ransomware assault.

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

Security

• Proper allocation and use of administration accounts
• Assigning NTFS (New Technology File System) and SMB authorizations
• Optimal firewall configuration
• Secure Remote Desktop Protocol configuration
• Recommend AntiVirus tools selection and deployment

• Split permission model for backup integrity
• Protecting critical servers such as AD
• Offsite backups including cloud backup to Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a variety of malicious software that encrypts or steals files so they cannot be used or are made publicly available. Crypto-ransomware sometimes locks the victim's computer. To avoid the carnage, the victim is required to send a specified amount of money, typically via a crypto currency such as Bitcoin, within a brief time window. It is not guaranteed that delivering the extortion price will recover the lost data or avoid its exposure to the public. Files can be encrypted or deleted throughout a network depending on the victim's write permissions, and you cannot break the military-grade encryption technologies used on the compromised files. A typical ransomware attack vector is booby-trapped email, whereby the victim is lured into interacting with by a social engineering technique called spear phishing. This makes the email to look as though it came from a familiar source. Another popular attack vector is a poorly protected Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) port.

CryptoLocker ushered in the modern era of ransomware in 2013, and the monetary losses attributed to by different versions of ransomware is estimated at billions of dollars annually, roughly doubling every two years. Famous examples are Locky, and Petya. Recent headline variants like Ryuk, DoppelPaymer and Spora are more sophisticated and have wreaked more havoc than earlier strains. Even if your backup/recovery processes enable your business to restore your encrypted data, you can still be threatened by exfiltration, where stolen data are exposed to the public (known as "doxxing"). Because new versions of ransomware crop up every day, there is no certainty that conventional signature-matching anti-virus filters will detect the latest attack. If an attack does appear in an email, it is important that your end users have been taught to be aware of social engineering tricks. Your last line of defense is a solid scheme for scheduling and retaining offsite backups plus the use of reliable restoration tools.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Readiness Audit in Akron
For pricing information and to learn more about how Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Assessment can enhance your defense against crypto-ransomware in Akron, call Progent at 800-462-8800 or visit Contact Progent.