Milwaukee 24-Hour Immediate Crypto-Ransomware
Virus Assessment and Recovery Help

Ransomware : Your Feared Information Technology Nightmare
Crypto-Ransomware has become an escalating cyberplague that poses an existential threat for businesses poorly prepared for an assault. Different iterations of ransomware such as CryptoLocker, WannaCry, Locky, NotPetya and MongoLock cryptoworms have been circulating for a long time and still inflict havoc. Recent strains of ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, Conti or Egregor, along with additional unnamed malware, not only do encryption of online files but also infiltrate any accessible system backups. Data synchronized to off-site disaster recovery sites can also be encrypted. In a vulnerable environment, it can make any recovery impossible and effectively sets the datacenter back to zero.

Restoring services and information following a ransomware attack becomes a race against time as the targeted business tries its best to contain and clear the crypto-ransomware and to restore business-critical activity. Because crypto-ransomware needs time to spread, attacks are frequently sprung during weekends and nights, when attacks in many cases take longer to uncover. This compounds the difficulty of rapidly assembling and coordinating a qualified response team.

Progent makes available a variety of support services for protecting enterprises from crypto-ransomware penetrations. Among these are team member education to help recognize and not fall victim to phishing exploits, ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) for remote monitoring and management, in addition to deployment of modern security appliances with AI capabilities from SentinelOne to discover and extinguish zero-day threats quickly. Progent in addition offers the services of expert ransomware recovery engineers with the talent and commitment to rebuild a compromised network as quickly as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Recovery Help
Following a crypto-ransomware attack, even paying the ransom demands in cryptocurrency does not ensure that cyber criminals will respond with the codes to decipher all your information. Kaspersky Labs estimated that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never restored their files after having paid the ransom, resulting in additional losses. The gamble is also costly. Ryuk ransoms frequently range from fifteen to forty BTC ($120,000 and $400,000). This is well above the average crypto-ransomware demands, which ZDNET determined to be approximately $13,000. The fallback is to piece back together the essential parts of your Information Technology environment. Without access to essential system backups, this requires a broad range of skill sets, well-coordinated project management, and the capability to work non-stop until the task is complete.

For two decades, Progent has made available expert Information Technology services for companies in Milwaukee and throughout the U.S. and has achieved Microsoft's Gold Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's group of subject matter experts (SMEs) includes professionals who have attained advanced industry certifications in foundation technologies such as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and popular distributions of Linux. Progent's cybersecurity specialists have garnered internationally-recognized industry certifications including CISA, CISSP, CRISC, and GIAC. (Visit Progent's certifications). Progent also has experience in financial systems and ERP software solutions. This breadth of expertise affords Progent the skills to knowledgably identify necessary systems and organize the remaining parts of your computer network system after a ransomware penetration and rebuild them into a functioning system.

Progent's ransomware group deploys top notch project management applications to orchestrate the complicated restoration process. Progent understands the importance of acting quickly and together with a customer's management and Information Technology staff to assign priority to tasks and to get the most important systems back online as fast as humanly possible.

Client Case Study: A Successful Ransomware Penetration Response
A small business hired Progent after their network was crashed by the Ryuk ransomware virus. Ryuk is generally considered to have been created by Northern Korean state sponsored criminal gangs, suspected of adopting approaches exposed from the United States NSA organization. Ryuk goes after specific businesses with limited ability to sustain disruption and is among the most lucrative instances of ransomware. High publicized targets include Data Resolution, a California-based information warehousing and cloud computing firm, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's customer is a small manufacturer located in Chicago with about 500 workers. The Ryuk event had paralyzed all company operations and manufacturing processes. Most of the client's information backups had been directly accessible at the start of the attack and were destroyed. The client was taking steps for paying the ransom demand (exceeding two hundred thousand dollars) and wishfully thinking for the best, but ultimately made the decision to use Progent.

Progent worked with the customer to rapidly understand and assign priority to the most important systems that had to be addressed in order to continue business operations:

• Active Directory
• Microsoft Exchange
• MRP System

Within 48 hours, Progent was able to restore Windows Active Directory to its pre-penetration state. Progent then performed reinstallations and storage recovery on key servers. All Microsoft Exchange Server data and configuration information were intact, which accelerated the rebuild of Exchange. Progent was also able to collect non-encrypted OST data files (Microsoft Outlook Offline Folder Files) on team workstations to recover mail information. A recent off-line backup of the client's financials/ERP systems made it possible to restore these essential applications back online. Although major work was left to recover totally from the Ryuk damage, critical services were restored rapidly:

During the next couple of weeks important milestones in the recovery process were accomplished through close cooperation between Progent team members and the customer:

• In-house web applications were returned to operation without losing any information.
• The MailStore Server with over 4 million archived emails was brought online and available for users.
• CRM/Orders/Invoices/Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivables/Inventory capabilities were completely restored.
• A new Palo Alto 850 firewall was deployed.
• Nearly all of the desktops and laptops were being used by staff.

Conclusion
A possible business extinction disaster was evaded with dedicated professionals, a broad array of subject matter expertise, and tight teamwork. Although in post mortem the crypto-ransomware attack described here should have been identified and stopped with current cyber security solutions and NIST Cybersecurity Framework best practices, user education, and appropriate incident response procedures for data protection and keeping systems up to date with security patches, the reality is that government-sponsored criminal cyber gangs from China, Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are tireless and are an ongoing threat. If you do get hit by a ransomware incident, feel confident that Progent's roster of professionals has proven experience in ransomware virus defense, remediation, and information systems restoration.

To review or download a PDF version of this ransomware incident report, click:
Progent's Crypto-Ransomware Recovery Case Study Datasheet. (PDF - 282 KB)

Additional Crypto-Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent offers companies in Milwaukee a variety of remote monitoring and security assessment services to help you to minimize your vulnerability to crypto-ransomware. These services include next-generation artificial intelligence capability to detect zero-day strains of ransomware that can evade traditional signature-based anti-virus products.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
  Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that utilizes SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior-based machine learning tools to defend physical and virtual endpoint devices against new malware assaults such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily get by traditional signature-matching AV tools. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards on-premises and cloud resources and provides a single platform to manage the complete malware attack progression including filtering, detection, containment, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Top features include one-click rollback with Windows VSS and real-time system-wide immunization against new threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. Read more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) endpoint protection and ransomware recovery.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP): Physical and Virtual Endpoint Protection and Microsoft Exchange Email Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection managed services deliver affordable in-depth security for physical servers and virtual machines, workstations, smartphones, and Microsoft Exchange. ProSight ESP uses adaptive security and modern behavior analysis for continuously monitoring and reacting to cyber assaults from all attack vectors. ProSight ESP offers firewall protection, intrusion alarms, endpoint management, and web filtering via cutting-edge tools packaged within one agent managed from a unified console. Progent's security and virtualization experts can assist you to plan and configure a ProSight ESP environment that meets your company's specific needs and that allows you achieve and demonstrate compliance with legal and industry information protection standards. Progent will help you specify and configure policies that ProSight ESP will enforce, and Progent will monitor your network and react to alarms that call for immediate attention. Progent's consultants can also assist your company to set up and test a backup and disaster recovery system like ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) so you can recover rapidly from a destructive cyber attack like ransomware. Read more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified endpoint security and Exchange filtering.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
  Progent has partnered with advanced backup/restore technology companies to produce ProSight Data Protection Services, a family of management outsourcing plans that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS products automate and track your backup processes and allow non-disruptive backup and rapid recovery of critical files, apps, system images, plus virtual machines. ProSight DPS lets you protect against data loss resulting from equipment failures, natural calamities, fire, malware such as ransomware, user mistakes, ill-intentioned insiders, or application glitches. Managed services in the ProSight Data Protection Services product family include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight ECHO Backup based on Barracuda purpose-built hardware, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent expert can help you to determine which of these fully managed backup services are best suited for your IT environment.

• ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam filtering and email encryption service that incorporates the infrastructure of top information security companies to provide web-based control and world-class security for your email traffic. The powerful structure of Progent's Email Guard managed service combines a Cloud Protection Layer with a local security gateway appliance to offer complete protection against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, DHAs, and other email-borne threats. Email Guard's Cloud Protection Layer serves as a first line of defense and keeps the vast majority of unwanted email from making it to your security perimeter. This reduces your exposure to external threats and saves network bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises gateway device adds a further layer of analysis for inbound email. For outbound email, the on-premises security gateway offers AV and anti-spam filtering, protection against data leaks, and email encryption. The on-premises security gateway can also assist Microsoft Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that stays inside your security perimeter. For more details, visit Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Network Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure management service that makes it easy and inexpensive for smaller organizations to map out, monitor, enhance and debug their connectivity appliances such as routers and switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers plus servers, client computers and other devices. Incorporating state-of-the-art Remote Monitoring and Management technology, ProSight WAN Watch makes sure that network diagrams are kept current, copies and manages the configuration of almost all devices on your network, tracks performance, and sends notices when issues are detected. By automating time-consuming management activities, ProSight WAN Watch can cut hours off common chores such as network mapping, reconfiguring your network, locating devices that need important software patches, or isolating performance issues. Find out more about ProSight WAN Watch network infrastructure monitoring and management services.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Monitoring
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop monitoring service that incorporates advanced remote monitoring and management (RMM) technology to help keep your network running efficiently by checking the state of critical assets that power your information system. When ProSight LAN Watch detects an issue, an alarm is transmitted immediately to your designated IT staff and your Progent engineering consultant so that all looming problems can be resolved before they can impact your network. Find out more details about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop remote monitoring consulting.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted Virtual Machines at Progent's Tier III Data Center
  With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small organization can have its key servers and applications hosted in a protected fault tolerant data center on a fast virtual machine host set up and maintained by Progent's IT support professionals. With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the client retains ownership of the data, the operating system software, and the apps. Since the environment is virtualized, it can be ported easily to an alternate hosting environment without a lengthy and difficult reinstallation procedure. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, your business is not tied a single hosting service. Find out more about ProSight Virtual Hosting services.

• ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
  ProSight IT Asset Management service is a cloud-based IT documentation management service that makes it easy to create, maintain, retrieve and safeguard data about your IT infrastructure, procedures, applications, and services. You can instantly find passwords or IP addresses and be alerted automatically about impending expirations of SSL certificates ,domains or warranties. By updating and managing your network documentation, you can save as much as 50% of time thrown away trying to find critical information about your network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a centralized location for holding and sharing all documents required for managing your network infrastructure like standard operating procedures and self-service instructions. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers a high level of automation for collecting and relating IT information. Whether you're planning enhancements, doing maintenance, or reacting to a crisis, ProSight IT Asset Management gets you the data you need when you need it. Find out more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Active Protection Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Detection and Remediation
  Progent's Active Defense Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that utilizes cutting edge behavior analysis tools to defend endpoints and servers and VMs against new malware attacks like ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely get by traditional signature-matching anti-virus products. Progent ASM services safeguard on-premises and cloud-based resources and offers a single platform to manage the entire threat lifecycle including filtering, identification, containment, remediation, and forensics. Top capabilities include single-click rollback using Windows VSS and real-time network-wide immunization against new attacks. Learn more about Progent's ransomware defense and recovery services.

• Progent's Outsourced/Shared Help Center: Support Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Support Center managed services permit your IT staff to outsource Support Desk services to Progent or split activity for Help Desk services seamlessly between your internal support group and Progent's extensive roster of certified IT service technicians, engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service offers a smooth supplement to your core network support staff. End user access to the Help Desk, delivery of support, escalation, ticket generation and updates, performance measurement, and maintenance of the support database are cohesive regardless of whether incidents are resolved by your in-house support group, by Progent's team, or both. Find out more about Progent's outsourced/co-managed Call Center services.

• Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services
  Progent's support services for software and firmware patch management offer organizations of all sizes a flexible and cost-effective alternative for evaluating, validating, scheduling, implementing, and tracking updates to your ever-evolving IT network. In addition to optimizing the protection and reliability of your IT environment, Progent's software/firmware update management services free up time for your in-house IT staff to focus on more strategic projects and tasks that derive the highest business value from your network. Learn more about Progent's software/firmware update management support services.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Secure Single Sign-on
  Progent's Duo MFA services incorporate Cisco's Duo technology to defend against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo supports one-tap identity verification with Apple iOS, Android, and other personal devices. Using 2FA, when you log into a secured online account and give your password you are asked to verify your identity via a unit that only you have and that is accessed using a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide selection of devices can be used for this second form of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline telephone, etc. You can designate several validation devices. For details about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for access security.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time and In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Applications
  ProSight Reporting is a growing family of real-time and in-depth reporting utilities created to integrate with the leading ticketing and remote network monitoring applications such as ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and features color coding to highlight and contextualize critical issues such as inconsistent support follow-up or endpoints with missing patches. By identifying ticketing or network health problems concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances productivity, reduces management hassle, and saves money. For more information, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.