Arlington Ransomware Protection and Recovery Consulting

Ransomware has been widely adopted by the major cyber-crime organizations and bad-actor governments, representing a potentially lethal threat to businesses that are breached. Modern strains of ransomware go after everything, including backup, making even selective restoration a challenging and expensive exercise. New strains of crypto-ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, Phobos, Conti and Nephilim have emerged, replacing Locky, TeslaCrypt, and NotPetya in prominence, sophistication, and destructiveness.

Most crypto-ransomware breaches are caused by innocuous-looking emails that have malicious hyperlinks or attachments, and a high percentage are "zero-day" variants that elude detection by traditional signature-based antivirus filters. While user training and frontline identification are important to defend against ransomware, leading practices dictate that you take for granted some malware will inevitably succeed and that you put in place a solid backup solution that enables you to recover rapidly with minimal losses.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Assessment is an ultra-affordable service built around an online interview with a Progent cybersecurity expert experienced in ransomware protection and repair. In the course of this assessment Progent will work directly with your Arlington IT management staff to collect pertinent information concerning your cybersecurity profile and backup environment. Progent will use this information to produce a Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment documenting how to follow best practices for implementing and managing your security and backup solution to block or recover from a ransomware assault.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment focuses on vital issues associated with crypto-ransomware prevention and restoration recovery. The report covers:

Security

• Correct use of administration accounts
• Assigning NTFS and SMB authorizations
• Optimal firewall settings
• Secure Remote Desktop Protocol configuration
• Recommend AntiVirus tools selection and configuration

• Split permission model for backup protection
• Backing up key servers including AD
• Offsite backups including cloud backup to Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a form of malicious software that encrypts or steals files so they are unusable or are made publicly available. Ransomware often locks the target's computer. To prevent the carnage, the target is asked to pay a specified amount of money (the ransom), usually via a crypto currency such as Bitcoin, within a short time window. It is never certain that paying the extortion price will recover the damaged files or avoid its exposure to the public. Files can be encrypted or erased throughout a network depending on the target's write permissions, and you cannot solve the military-grade encryption algorithms used on the compromised files. A common ransomware attack vector is booby-trapped email, in which the victim is lured into responding to by means of a social engineering exploit called spear phishing. This causes the email message to appear to come from a trusted sender. Another common attack vector is an improperly protected Remote Desktop Protocol port.

The ransomware variant CryptoLocker ushered in the modern era of crypto-ransomware in 2013, and the monetary losses attributed to by the many strains of ransomware is said to be billions of dollars annually, more than doubling every two years. Famous attacks include Locky, and NotPetya. Recent high-profile threats like Ryuk, Maze and Cerber are more elaborate and have wreaked more damage than older strains. Even if your backup/recovery processes permit your business to recover your encrypted files, you can still be threatened by so-called exfiltration, where ransomed documents are made public. Because additional variants of ransomware crop up every day, there is no guarantee that conventional signature-matching anti-virus tools will detect the latest attack. If threat does appear in an email, it is critical that your users have been taught to identify social engineering tricks. Your last line of protection is a solid scheme for performing and retaining remote backups plus the deployment of dependable restoration platforms.

Contact Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Evaluation in Arlington
For pricing information and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Preparedness Report can bolster your protection against crypto-ransomware in Arlington, phone Progent at 800-462-8800 or see Contact Progent.