Bristol Ransomware Prevention and Restoration Solutions

Ransomware has been weaponized by the major cyber-crime organizations and malicious states, posing a potentially existential risk to businesses that are breached. Current variations of ransomware target everything, including backup, making even partial recovery a long and costly process. Novel variations of ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Mailto (aka Netwalker), Phobos, Conti and Egregor have emerged, displacing WannaCry, Cerber, and NotPetya in notoriety, elaborateness, and destructive impact.

90% of crypto-ransomware penetrations come from innocent-seeming emails that include malicious hyperlinks or file attachments, and many are so-called "zero-day" variants that can escape the defenses of legacy signature-matching antivirus filters. While user education and frontline detection are critical to defend your network against ransomware attacks, leading practices dictate that you take for granted some malware will eventually succeed and that you prepare a strong backup solution that enables you to repair the damage rapidly with minimal losses.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Assessment is an ultra-affordable service built around an online interview with a Progent cybersecurity consultant skilled in ransomware defense and recovery. During this assessment Progent will cooperate directly with your Bristol network management staff to collect critical information concerning your security configuration and backup environment. Progent will utilize this information to produce a Basic Security and Best Practices Report detailing how to apply leading practices for configuring and administering your security and backup solution to prevent or recover from a ransomware attack.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Report focuses on key issues related to ransomware prevention and restoration recovery. The report covers:

Security

• Effective use of administration accounts
• Appropriate NTFS and SMB (Server Message Block) authorizations
• Optimal firewall configuration
• Secure Remote Desktop Protocol access
• Guidance for AntiVirus (AV) filtering identification and deployment

• Split permission architecture for backup integrity
• Backing up key servers such as AD
• Offsite backups including cloud backup to Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a form of malicious software that encrypts or steals a victim's files so they are unusable or are made publicly available. Ransomware sometimes locks the target's computer. To avoid the carnage, the target is asked to send a specified amount of money, usually via a crypto currency like Bitcoin, within a brief time window. There is no guarantee that delivering the extortion price will recover the lost files or avoid its publication. Files can be altered or deleted throughout a network depending on the target's write permissions, and you cannot break the strong encryption technologies used on the hostage files. A typical ransomware delivery package is spoofed email, in which the target is lured into interacting with by means of a social engineering technique called spear phishing. This makes the email message to appear to come from a trusted source. Another common attack vector is a poorly protected RDP port.

The ransomware variant CryptoLocker opened the modern era of crypto-ransomware in 2013, and the monetary losses caused by different strains of ransomware is said to be billions of dollars per year, more than doubling every two years. Notorious attacks are WannaCry, and NotPetya. Recent high-profile threats like Ryuk, Maze and Cerber are more complex and have wreaked more damage than older versions. Even if your backup procedures permit you to restore your ransomed data, you can still be hurt by exfiltration, where ransomed data are exposed to the public (known as "doxxing"). Because new variants of ransomware are launched daily, there is no certainty that traditional signature-matching anti-virus tools will detect the latest attack. If an attack does appear in an email, it is important that your 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 deployment of dependable recovery tools.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Susceptibility Report in Bristol
For pricing details and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Preparedness Testing can bolster your protection against crypto-ransomware in Bristol, call Progent at 800-462-8800 or visit Contact Progent.