Albuquerque Ransomware Prevention and Restoration Consulting

Ransomware has been widely adopted by the major cyber-crime organizations and rogue governments, representing a potentially existential risk to businesses that fall victim. Current variations of ransomware target everything, including online backup, making even partial recovery a challenging and costly process. Novel versions of crypto-ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, DopplePaymer, LockBit and Egregor have emerged, replacing Locky, Spora, and CryptoWall in prominence, sophistication, and destructive impact.

90% of ransomware penetrations are caused by innocent-seeming emails that include dangerous hyperlinks or file attachments, and a high percentage are "zero-day" variants that can escape detection by legacy signature-based antivirus (AV) tools. While user education and frontline identification are important to protect your network against ransomware, leading practices demand that you assume some attacks will inevitably get through and that you prepare a solid backup solution that enables you to repair the damage rapidly with minimal losses.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Vulnerability Assessment is a low-cost service centered around a remote discussion with a Progent security consultant experienced in ransomware protection and recovery. In the course of this assessment Progent will cooperate directly with your Albuquerque network management staff to gather pertinent data concerning your security profile and backup environment. Progent will use this data to create a Basic Security and Best Practices Report documenting how to follow best practices for configuring and administering your cybersecurity and backup systems to block or recover from a crypto-ransomware attack.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Report highlights vital issues associated with ransomware defense and restoration recovery. The review covers:

Security

• Proper allocation and use of administration accounts
• Assigning NTFS and SMB (Server Message Block) permissions
• Proper firewall configuration
• Safe Remote Desktop Protocol connections
• Recommend AntiVirus (AV) filtering selection and configuration

• Split permission architecture for backup integrity
• Protecting key servers such as Active Directory
• Geographically dispersed backups with cloud backup to Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts or steals files so they are unusable or are publicized. Ransomware sometimes locks the victim's computer. To prevent the damage, the victim is asked to pay a certain amount of money, typically via a crypto currency such as Bitcoin, within a brief time window. It is not guaranteed that paying the extortion price will restore the damaged data or prevent its exposure to the public. Files can be encrypted or erased throughout a network based on the victim's write permissions, and you cannot break the military-grade encryption algorithms used on the hostage files. A common ransomware delivery package is booby-trapped email, whereby the user is lured into interacting with by a social engineering exploit called spear phishing. This makes the email to look as though it came from a familiar source. Another common vulnerability is a poorly protected Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) port.

CryptoLocker ushered in the modern era of crypto-ransomware in 2013, and the damage attributed to by different strains of ransomware is said to be billions of dollars per year, roughly doubling every two years. Notorious examples include WannaCry, and Petya. Current headline threats like Ryuk, Maze and CryptoWall are more elaborate and have wreaked more havoc than earlier versions. Even if your backup/recovery procedures enable your business to recover your encrypted files, you can still be threatened by so-called exfiltration, where stolen data are exposed to the public (known as "doxxing"). Because new variants of ransomware crop up daily, there is no guarantee that traditional signature-matching anti-virus tools will detect a new attack. If an attack does appear in an email, it is important that your users have been taught to be aware of phishing techniques. Your last line of defense is a solid process for scheduling and keeping remote backups plus the deployment of reliable recovery tools.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Vulnerability Report in Albuquerque
For pricing information and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Ransomware Readiness Audit can enhance your protection against ransomware in Albuquerque, call Progent at 800-462-8800 or see Contact Progent.