Boston Ransomware Prevention and Cleanup Consulting

Ransomware has been weaponized by the major cyber-crime organizations and bad-actor states, posing a possibly existential threat to businesses that are victimized. The latest strains of ransomware target all vulnerable resources, including backup, making even selective recovery a challenging and expensive process. Novel variations of crypto-ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Mailto (aka Netwalker), DopplePaymer, LockBit and Egregor have made the headlines, displacing WannaCry, TeslaCrypt, and CryptoWall in notoriety, elaborateness, and destructiveness.

Most ransomware penetrations are the result of innocent-looking emails that have dangerous links or file attachments, and many are "zero-day" attacks that can escape detection by legacy signature-matching antivirus (AV) filters. While user education and frontline detection are important to protect your network against ransomware, leading practices demand that you assume some attacks will eventually succeed and that you put in place a strong backup solution that allows you to repair the damage quickly with little if any damage.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Checkup is a low-cost service centered around an online interview with a Progent security expert experienced in ransomware protection and repair. In the course of this assessment Progent will cooperate directly with your Boston IT management staff to collect pertinent information concerning your cybersecurity setup and backup environment. Progent will utilize this information to create a Basic Security and Best Practices Report documenting how to apply leading practices for configuring and administering your cybersecurity and backup solution to block or recover from a ransomware attack.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Report focuses on vital issues associated with ransomware defense and restoration recovery. The report addresses:

Security

• Correct allocation and use of administration accounts
• Appropriate NTFS (New Technology File System) and SMB (Server Message Block) authorizations
• Proper firewall settings
• Safe RDP access
• Recommend AntiVirus filtering identification and configuration

• Split permission architecture for backup integrity
• Backing up key servers including AD
• Geographically dispersed backups with cloud backup to Microsoft Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts or deletes files so they are unusable or are made publicly available. Crypto-ransomware sometimes locks the victim's computer. To avoid the carnage, the target is required to pay a specified ransom, 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 restore the lost data or prevent its exposure to the public. Files can be encrypted or erased across 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 tainted email, in which the user is tricked into interacting with by a social engineering technique called spear phishing. This makes the email message to appear to come from a familiar source. Another common attack vector is a poorly secured Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) port.

CryptoLocker opened the new age of ransomware in 2013, and the damage caused by different strains of ransomware is said to be billions of dollars annually, roughly doubling every two years. Famous attacks include WannaCry, and Petya. Current high-profile variants like Ryuk, DoppelPaymer and Spora are more elaborate and have wreaked more havoc than earlier versions. Even if your backup processes allow you to recover your ransomed files, you can still be threatened by so-called exfiltration, where ransomed data are exposed to the public. Because new variants of ransomware are launched daily, there is no guarantee that conventional signature-matching anti-virus tools will block the latest malware. If an attack does show up in an email, it is critical that your end users have been taught to be aware of social engineering tricks. Your ultimate defense is a sound scheme for performing and keeping offsite backups plus the deployment of dependable restoration tools.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Susceptibility Consultation in Boston
For pricing details and to learn more about how Progent's ProSight Ransomware Vulnerability Testing can bolster your defense against crypto-ransomware in Boston, call Progent at 800-462-8800 or visit Contact Progent.