Birmingham Ransomware Protection and Restoration Solutions

Ransomware has become the weapon of choice for cyber extortionists and malicious states, posing a possibly lethal risk to businesses that are victimized. Modern strains of ransomware target everything, including backup, making even partial restoration a challenging and expensive exercise. Novel variations of ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, DopplePaymer, Conti and Nephilim have emerged, displacing Locky, Cerber, and CryptoWall in prominence, sophistication, and destructive impact.

Most crypto-ransomware penetrations come from innocent-looking emails that include dangerous links or attachments, and a high percentage are "zero-day" attacks that elude the defenses of traditional signature-based antivirus tools. Although user education and frontline identification are important to protect against ransomware attacks, leading practices demand that you expect that some attacks will inevitably succeed and that you deploy a strong backup mechanism that permits you to restore files and services quickly with minimal losses.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Report is a low-cost service built around an online discussion with a Progent cybersecurity expert skilled in ransomware defense and repair. During this interview Progent will cooperate directly with your Birmingham network management staff to collect critical information about your security configuration and backup environment. Progent will use this data to create a Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment documenting how to adhere to leading practices for configuring and managing your security and backup solution to prevent or recover from a crypto-ransomware assault.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment highlights key areas associated with ransomware defense and restoration recovery. The review addresses:

Security

• Effective allocation and use of administration accounts
• Appropriate NTFS (New Technology File System) and SMB permissions
• Optimal firewall configuration
• Safe RDP configuration
• Guidance for AntiVirus filtering selection and deployment

• Split permission architecture for backup integrity
• Protecting key servers including Active Directory
• Offsite backups including cloud backup to Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts or deletes files so they cannot be used or are made publicly available. Crypto-ransomware sometimes locks the target's computer. To prevent the damage, the target is required to send a certain amount of money, usually in the form of a crypto currency like Bitcoin, within a brief period of time. It is never certain that delivering the ransom will recover the lost files or prevent its publication. Files can be encrypted or deleted across a network depending on the victim's write permissions, and you cannot reverse engineer the military-grade encryption algorithms used on the hostage files. A common ransomware attack vector is tainted email, whereby the target is tricked into interacting with by means of a social engineering exploit called spear phishing. This causes the email message to look as though it came from a trusted source. Another common attack vector is a poorly secured Remote Desktop Protocol port.

CryptoLocker ushered in the new age of crypto-ransomware in 2013, and the damage caused by different strains of ransomware is estimated at billions of dollars per year, more than doubling every other year. Notorious attacks are Locky, and Petya. Current high-profile variants like Ryuk, DoppelPaymer and Cerber are more complex and have wreaked more damage than older versions. Even if your backup/recovery processes allow your business to restore your ransomed files, you can still be hurt by exfiltration, where stolen documents are made public. Because new versions of ransomware crop up daily, there is no certainty that conventional signature-based anti-virus filters will detect the latest malware. If an attack does appear in an email, it is critical that your end users have learned to be aware of social engineering techniques. Your ultimate defense is a solid scheme for scheduling and retaining offsite backups and the use of reliable restoration tools.

Contact Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Vulnerability Report in Birmingham
For pricing details and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Ransomware Susceptibility Audit can bolster your defense against crypto-ransomware in Birmingham, call Progent at 800-462-8800 or see Contact Progent.