Ransomware : Your Worst IT Catastrophe
Ransomware has become a too-frequent cyber pandemic that presents an extinction-level threat for businesses of all sizes poorly prepared for an assault. Different iterations of crypto-ransomware like the CrySIS, Fusob, Bad Rabbit, SamSam and MongoLock cryptoworms have been running rampant for many years and still inflict destruction. Modern versions of ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Conti or Egregor, as well as more as yet unnamed newcomers, not only encrypt online information but also infiltrate any accessible system protection. Information synchronized to cloud environments can also be ransomed. In a poorly designed data protection solution, this can make automated recovery useless and basically knocks the network back to zero.
Getting back on-line applications and data after a ransomware intrusion becomes a race against time as the targeted business fights to contain the damage, remove the ransomware, and resume business-critical operations. Due to the fact that ransomware takes time to move laterally, penetrations are usually launched during weekends and nights, when penetrations typically take more time to notice. This multiplies the difficulty of rapidly assembling and orchestrating a capable mitigation team.
Progent makes available an assortment of support services for securing organizations from ransomware attacks. Among these are team education to become familiar with and not fall victim to phishing exploits, ProSight Active Security Monitoring for remote monitoring and management, plus installation of next-generation security appliances with artificial intelligence technology from SentinelOne to detect and suppress zero-day cyber attacks intelligently. Progent in addition can provide the services of seasoned crypto-ransomware recovery engineers with the skills and commitment to re-deploy a compromised environment as quickly as possible.
Progent's Crypto-Ransomware Recovery Services
After a crypto-ransomware event, sending the ransom in cryptocurrency does not ensure that merciless criminals will return the needed keys to decrypt any of your data. Kaspersky estimated that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never recovered their files even after having sent off the ransom, resulting in increased losses. The risk is also costly. Ryuk ransoms are typically several hundred thousand dollars. For larger enterprises, the ransom can reach millions of dollars. The alternative is to re-install the essential parts of your IT environment. Absent the availability of full data backups, this calls for a broad range of IT skills, well-coordinated team management, and the capability to work continuously until the recovery project is finished.
For twenty years, Progent has provided certified expert IT services for companies across the U.S. and has achieved Microsoft's Gold Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's pool of subject matter experts includes engineers who have earned top industry certifications in important technologies such as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's cybersecurity experts have garnered internationally-renowned certifications including CISM, CISSP, CRISC, GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Visit Progent's certifications). Progent also has experience in financial systems and ERP application software. This breadth of expertise affords Progent the capability to knowledgably identify critical systems and consolidate the remaining pieces of your network system after a ransomware penetration and configure them into a functioning system.
Progent's ransomware team deploys top notch project management applications to coordinate the sophisticated restoration process. Progent understands the urgency of acting quickly and together with a client's management and Information Technology team members to assign priority to tasks and to get essential services back on line as soon as humanly possible.
Customer Case Study: A Successful Ransomware Incident Restoration
A business engaged Progent after their network was taken over by the Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is generally considered to have been launched by Northern Korean state cybercriminals, possibly adopting technology exposed from America's NSA organization. Ryuk seeks specific companies with limited tolerance for disruption and is one of the most lucrative versions of ransomware. Well Known targets include Data Resolution, a California-based info warehousing and cloud computing firm, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's client is a regional manufacturer located in Chicago and has around 500 staff members. The Ryuk event had brought down all essential operations and manufacturing capabilities. Most of the client's information backups had been directly accessible at the time of the intrusion and were eventually encrypted. The client was taking steps for paying the ransom demand (in excess of $200K) and praying for the best, but ultimately utilized Progent.
"I can't say enough in regards to the care Progent gave us during the most critical period of (our) company's life. We had little choice but to pay the cybercriminals except for the confidence the Progent team gave us. That you were able to get our messaging and important applications back into operation sooner than 1 week was amazing. Every single consultant I talked with or texted at Progent was amazingly focused on getting our company operational and was working 24/7 to bail us out."
Progent worked hand in hand the client to rapidly understand and prioritize the most important elements that had to be restored in order to continue company functions:
- Windows Active Directory
- Microsoft Exchange Server
- MRP System
To begin, Progent followed Anti-virus incident mitigation best practices by halting the spread and performing virus removal steps. Progent then started the steps of restoring Microsoft Active Directory, the foundation of enterprise networks built upon Microsoft technology. Microsoft Exchange messaging will not work without Windows AD, and the businesses' accounting and MRP software leveraged Microsoft SQL Server, which depends on Windows AD for security authorization to the database.
Within two days, Progent was able to re-build Active Directory services to its pre-penetration state. Progent then initiated rebuilding and storage recovery on key servers. All Microsoft Exchange Server data and attributes were usable, which facilitated the restore of Exchange. Progent was able to find local OST data files (Microsoft Outlook Off-Line Folder Files) on staff PCs to recover mail messages. A recent offline backup of the customer's financials/MRP software made them able to restore these required services back online for users. Although a lot of work was left to recover totally from the Ryuk damage, core systems were returned to operations rapidly:
"For the most part, the assembly line operation ran fairly normal throughout and we delivered all customer orders."
Over the next month important milestones in the recovery process were accomplished through close cooperation between Progent team members and the client:
- Self-hosted web applications were returned to operation with no loss of data.
- The MailStore Server containing more than four million historical messages was restored to operations and accessible to users.
- CRM/Product Ordering/Invoicing/AP/Accounts Receivables (AR)/Inventory Control capabilities were 100 percent functional.
- A new Palo Alto 850 security appliance was brought on-line.
- Ninety percent of the user desktops and notebooks were fully operational.
"Much of what went on that first week is mostly a fog for me, but my team will not forget the urgency each and every one of you put in to help get our business back. I've utilized Progent for at least 10 years, possibly more, and every time Progent has outperformed my expectations and delivered as promised. This time was a life saver."
Conclusion
A possible business-ending catastrophe was averted by dedicated professionals, a wide spectrum of knowledge, and tight teamwork. Although in retrospect the ransomware virus penetration described here would have been identified and blocked with current cyber security technology solutions and NIST Cybersecurity Framework best practices, staff training, and properly executed security procedures for information protection and proper patching controls, the fact remains that government-sponsored cybercriminals from China, North Korea and elsewhere are relentless and will continue. If you do get hit by a crypto-ransomware incursion, remember that Progent's team of experts has proven experience in ransomware virus blocking, mitigation, and information systems recovery.
"So, to Darrin, Matt, Aaron, Dan, Claude, Jesse, Tony and Chris (along with others that were involved), thank you for making it so I could get some sleep after we made it through the initial fire. Everyone did an fabulous effort, and if any of your team is visiting the Chicago area, dinner is my treat!"
To review or download a PDF version of this customer story, please click:
Progent's Ransomware Incident Recovery Case Study Datasheet. (PDF - 282 KB)
Additional Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent can provide companies in Mission Viejo a variety of online monitoring and security evaluation services designed to assist you to minimize the threat from ransomware. These services include modern AI technology to uncover zero-day variants of crypto-ransomware that are able to get past legacy signature-based security products.
- ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection (EPP) service that incorporates SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior-based machine learning technology to defend physical and virtual endpoints against new malware attacks like ransomware and email phishing, which routinely get by legacy signature-based anti-virus tools. ProSight Active Security Monitoring protects on-premises and cloud-based resources and offers a unified platform to address the complete threat lifecycle including filtering, detection, mitigation, remediation, and forensics. Top features include one-click rollback with Windows VSS and automatic network-wide immunization against new threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring endpoint protection and ransomware defense.
- ProSight Enhanced Security Protection: Physical and Virtual Endpoint Security and Exchange Filtering
Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) managed services deliver affordable multi-layer protection for physical servers and virtual machines, workstations, mobile devices, and Microsoft Exchange. ProSight ESP utilizes adaptive security and advanced machine learning for continuously monitoring and reacting to security assaults from all vectors. ProSight ESP delivers firewall protection, intrusion alarms, device control, and web filtering via leading-edge tools packaged within a single agent accessible from a single console. Progent's data protection and virtualization consultants can assist your business to design and implement a ProSight ESP deployment that addresses your organization's unique needs and that allows you prove compliance with government and industry information security standards. Progent will help you specify and implement security policies that ProSight ESP will manage, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and respond to alarms that call for urgent attention. Progent's consultants can also assist you to install and test a backup and disaster recovery solution like ProSight Data Protection Services so you can get back in business quickly from a destructive security attack such as ransomware. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified physical and virtual endpoint protection and Exchange email filtering.
- ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS): Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
Progent has worked with leading backup technology providers to produce ProSight Data Protection Services, a selection of subscription-based management outsourcing plans that provide backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS services automate and track your backup processes and enable non-disruptive backup and fast restoration of vital files/folders, applications, images, and Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps your business recover from data loss resulting from equipment breakdown, natural disasters, fire, cyber attacks such as ransomware, user error, malicious insiders, or application glitches. Managed services available in the ProSight DPS portfolio include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight ECHO Backup based on Barracuda dedicated hardware, and ProSight MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent expert can help you to determine which of these fully managed backup services are most appropriate for your IT environment.
- ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam and virus filtering and email encryption service that incorporates the infrastructure of leading data security companies to provide web-based control and world-class protection for your email traffic. The powerful architecture of Progent's Email Guard combines cloud-based filtering with an on-premises gateway appliance to provide complete defense against spam, viruses, Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks (DHAs), and other email-based malware. 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 decreases your exposure to external threats and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises security gateway device provides a further layer of inspection for inbound email. For outbound email, the local gateway offers AV and anti-spam filtering, protection against data leaks, and email encryption. The local security gateway can also help Microsoft Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that originates and ends inside your corporate firewall. For more information, see ProSight 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 businesses to map out, track, optimize and debug their connectivity hardware such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers plus servers, endpoints and other networked devices. Incorporating state-of-the-art Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology, ProSight WAN Watch ensures that infrastructure topology maps are always updated, copies and displays the configuration of virtually all devices on your network, monitors performance, and sends alerts when issues are detected. By automating time-consuming management processes, ProSight WAN Watch can cut hours off ordinary tasks such as making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, finding devices that need important updates, or isolating performance problems. Learn more details about ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure monitoring and management services.
- ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Remote Monitoring
ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop remote monitoring service that uses state-of-the-art remote monitoring and management (RMM) technology to keep your IT system operating efficiently by tracking the state of vital assets that drive your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch detects a problem, an alarm is sent immediately to your designated IT personnel and your assigned Progent consultant so that any potential problems can be addressed before they have a chance to disrupt productivity. Learn more about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop monitoring services.
- ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted VMs at Progent's World-class Data Center
With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small business can have its critical servers and applications hosted in a secure fault tolerant data center on a high-performance virtual host set up and maintained by Progent's network support professionals. With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting model, the client retains ownership of the data, the operating system software, and the applications. Because the system is virtualized, it can be ported immediately to a different hosting solution without requiring a time-consuming and technically risky reinstallation process. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, you are not locked into a single hosting provider. Learn 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 protect information related to your IT infrastructure, processes, business apps, and services. You can quickly find passwords or IP addresses and be alerted automatically about impending expirations of SSL certificates or domains. By cleaning up and organizing your network documentation, you can save as much as half of time spent looking for vital information about your IT network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a common location for storing and collaborating on all documents related to managing your network infrastructure such as standard operating procedures and How-To's. ProSight IT Asset Management also supports a high level of automation for gathering and relating IT information. Whether you're making improvements, performing maintenance, or reacting to an emergency, ProSight IT Asset Management gets you the knowledge you require as soon as you need it. Read more about Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service.
- Progent Active Protection Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Detection and Cleanup
Progent's Active Defense Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection solution that incorporates cutting edge behavior-based machine learning technology to guard endpoints as well as servers and VMs against new malware assaults such as ransomware and email phishing, which routinely escape legacy signature-based AV tools. Progent Active Security Monitoring services safeguard on-premises and cloud resources and provides a single platform to address the entire threat lifecycle including protection, identification, mitigation, remediation, and forensics. Top capabilities include single-click rollback using Windows VSS and real-time network-wide immunization against newly discovered attacks. Find out more about Progent's ransomware protection and recovery services.
- Outsourced/Co-managed Service Center: Call Center Managed Services
Progent's Call Center services enable your IT group to offload Help Desk services to Progent or divide activity for Service Desk support transparently between your in-house network support group and Progent's nationwide pool of certified IT service technicians, engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Shared Service Desk provides a smooth supplement to your in-house support team. Client access to the Help Desk, provision of technical assistance, problem escalation, trouble ticket creation and updates, efficiency metrics, and management of the service database are cohesive whether issues are taken care of by your in-house support resources, by Progent, or by a combination. Find out more about Progent's outsourced/co-managed Help Center services.
- Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services
Progent's support services for patch management offer organizations of any size a versatile and affordable solution for assessing, testing, scheduling, applying, and tracking updates to your ever-evolving IT network. In addition to maximizing the security and reliability of your computer environment, Progent's software/firmware update management services permit your IT staff to focus on line-of-business projects and tasks that deliver maximum business value from your network. Find out more about Progent's patch management services.
- ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: ID Confirmation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Secure Single Sign-on
Progent's Duo authentication service plans incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against stolen passwords through the use of two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports single-tap identity verification on Apple iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using Duo 2FA, whenever you log into a secured application and enter your password you are asked to confirm your identity on a unit that only you possess and that uses a different network channel. A broad selection of devices can be utilized for this second form of ID validation including a smartphone or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may register several validation devices. For more information about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services.
- ProSight Reporting: Real-time Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Platforms
ProSight Reporting is a growing family of real-time reporting utilities created to integrate with the industry's leading ticketing and network monitoring programs including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and features color coding to highlight and contextualize key issues like spotty support follow-up or machines with missing patches. By exposing ticketing or network health problems concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting improves productivity, reduces management overhead, and saves money. For more information, see ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring platforms.
For Mission Viejo 24/7 Ransomware Remediation Experts, call Progent at 800-462-8800 or go to Contact Progent.