Ransomware : Your Crippling IT Disaster
Ransomware has become a too-frequent cyber pandemic that presents an extinction-level threat for businesses of all sizes unprepared for an attack. Multiple generations of ransomware such as Dharma, Fusob, Locky, SamSam and MongoLock cryptoworms have been around for many years and continue to inflict damage. The latest variants of crypto-ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, LockBit or Egregor, plus frequent as yet unnamed viruses, not only encrypt online files but also infiltrate all available system protection mechanisms. Information synchronized to off-site disaster recovery sites can also be ransomed. In a poorly designed system, it can make automated restoration useless and effectively knocks the entire system back to zero.
Retrieving applications and data after a ransomware attack becomes a sprint against the clock as the targeted business struggles to stop lateral movement, cleanup the crypto-ransomware, and restore mission-critical operations. Due to the fact that ransomware needs time to replicate, attacks are frequently sprung during nights and weekends, when attacks are likely to take more time to recognize. This compounds the difficulty of quickly assembling and organizing a capable mitigation team.
Progent provides a variety of help services for protecting businesses from ransomware attacks. These include team education to help identify and avoid phishing exploits, ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) for remote monitoring and management, plus deployment of modern security gateways with artificial intelligence technology from SentinelOne to detect and suppress day-zero cyber attacks automatically. Progent in addition offers the services of veteran ransomware recovery consultants with the track record and perseverance to restore a breached system as quickly as possible.
Progent's Ransomware Recovery Services
Following a ransomware invasion, paying the ransom in cryptocurrency does not guarantee that distant criminals will provide the needed codes to unencrypt any or all of your information. Kaspersky determined that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never restored their files after having paid the ransom, resulting in more losses. The gamble is also expensive. Ryuk ransoms are typically several hundred thousand dollars. For larger organizations, the ransom demand can be in the millions. The fallback is to piece back together the key elements of your IT environment. Without access to full information backups, this calls for a wide complement of IT skills, top notch project management, and the capability to work non-stop until the task is done.
For two decades, Progent has made available professional IT services for companies across the United States and has achieved Microsoft's Gold Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's group of subject matter experts includes engineers who have earned high-level certifications in important technologies including Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and popular distributions of Linux. Progent's cyber security experts have garnered internationally-renowned industry certifications including CISM, CISSP, ISACA CRISC, SANS GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Refer to Progent's certifications). Progent also has expertise with financial systems and ERP application software. This breadth of expertise provides Progent the skills to knowledgably understand critical systems and re-organize the remaining pieces of your network system after a ransomware event and configure them into a functioning system.
Progent's security team deploys state-of-the-art project management systems to coordinate the complicated restoration process. Progent appreciates the importance of working swiftly and in unison with a customer's management and IT resources to assign priority to tasks and to get the most important services back on-line as soon as humanly possible.
Customer Story: A Successful Ransomware Incident Response
A business contacted Progent after their company was brought down by Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is believed to have been launched by Northern Korean state sponsored hackers, possibly adopting approaches exposed from the U.S. NSA organization. Ryuk attacks specific businesses with little or no room for operational disruption and is among the most lucrative incarnations of ransomware viruses. Headline targets include Data Resolution, a California-based information warehousing and cloud computing company, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's customer is a small manufacturing business based in the Chicago metro area and has about 500 staff members. The Ryuk penetration had frozen all essential operations and manufacturing capabilities. The majority of the client's data protection had been online at the start of the attack and were destroyed. The client was taking steps for paying the ransom demand (in excess of $200,000) and hoping for good luck, but in the end made the decision to use Progent.
"I can't tell you enough in regards to the expertise Progent gave us during the most critical time of (our) businesses survival. We had little choice but to pay the cybercriminals if not for the confidence the Progent experts provided us. The fact that you were able to get our e-mail and important applications back on-line sooner than a week was something I thought impossible. Every single person I got help from or texted at Progent was urgently focused on getting us back online and was working at all hours on our behalf."
Progent worked hand in hand the customer to rapidly get our arms around and assign priority to the key areas that had to be addressed to make it possible to resume business functions:
- Active Directory
- Email
- Accounting/MRP
To get going, Progent adhered to ransomware incident mitigation best practices by stopping lateral movement and clearing up compromised systems. Progent then started the process of restoring Microsoft Active Directory, the key technology of enterprise systems built upon Microsoft technology. Microsoft Exchange messaging will not operate without Windows AD, and the businesses' MRP system utilized Microsoft SQL, which depends on Windows AD for access to the database.
In less than two days, Progent was able to restore Windows Active Directory to its pre-attack state. Progent then performed reinstallations and storage recovery on key applications. All Exchange Server ties and configuration information were usable, which facilitated the restore of Exchange. Progent was able to collect local OST data files (Microsoft Outlook Off-Line Data Files) on team workstations in order to recover mail information. A not too old offline backup of the client's accounting/MRP systems made them able to recover these essential applications back online. Although a large amount of work needed to be completed to recover totally from the Ryuk damage, critical systems were recovered quickly:
"For the most part, the production line operation ran fairly normal throughout and we delivered all customer deliverables."
Over the next couple of weeks critical milestones in the restoration process were completed through close cooperation between Progent team members and the customer:
- Internal web sites were returned to operation with no loss of information.
- The MailStore Server with over four million archived messages was spun up and available for users.
- CRM/Product Ordering/Invoices/Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivables/Inventory Control functions were 100 percent functional.
- A new Palo Alto 850 security appliance was set up.
- Most of the user PCs were fully operational.
"So much of what went on in the initial days is mostly a blur for me, but I will not forget the dedication each and every one of your team accomplished to help get our business back. I have trusted Progent for the past ten years, possibly more, and every time I needed help Progent has shined and delivered. This time was a testament to your capabilities."
Conclusion
A possible company-ending disaster was avoided by results-oriented professionals, a broad array of knowledge, and close teamwork. Although upon completion of forensics the ransomware incident detailed here could have been identified and stopped with up-to-date security technology and security best practices, user training, and well designed security procedures for data backup and keeping systems up to date with security patches, the fact remains that government-sponsored cybercriminals from Russia, China and elsewhere are tireless and represent an ongoing threat. If you do fall victim to a crypto-ransomware penetration, feel confident that Progent's team of professionals has extensive experience in crypto-ransomware virus blocking, mitigation, and information systems disaster recovery.
"So, to Darrin, Matt, Aaron, Dan, Claude, Jesse, Arnaud, Allen, Tony and Chris (along with others that were contributing), I'm grateful for letting me get some sleep after we got past the initial fire. All of you did an fabulous job, and if anyone is visiting the Chicago area, dinner is on me!"
To read or download a PDF version of this customer case study, click:
Progent's Ransomware Virus Recovery Case Study Datasheet. (PDF - 282 KB)
Additional Crypto-Ransomware Protection Services Available from Progent
Progent can provide businesses in Fort Myers a variety of remote monitoring and security assessment services to assist you to reduce the threat from ransomware. These services include modern machine learning capability to uncover new variants of ransomware that are able to escape detection by traditional signature-based security solutions.
- ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Remote Monitoring and Management
ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop remote monitoring managed service that uses state-of-the-art remote monitoring and management (RMM) technology to keep your IT system operating efficiently by checking the health of vital assets that power your information system. When ProSight LAN Watch detects a problem, an alarm is transmitted automatically to your specified IT staff and your Progent engineering consultant so that all potential problems can be resolved before they have a chance to impact productivity. Learn more details about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop remote monitoring services.
- ProSight WAN Watch: Network Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
Progent's ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure monitoring and management service that makes it easy and inexpensive for small and mid-sized businesses to map out, monitor, enhance and troubleshoot their networking hardware such as routers and switches, firewalls, and access points as well as servers, client computers and other devices. Using state-of-the-art Remote Monitoring and Management technology, ProSight WAN Watch makes sure that network diagrams are always updated, copies and manages the configuration information of virtually all devices connected to your network, tracks performance, and sends alerts when issues are discovered. By automating complex management activities, WAN Watch can knock hours off ordinary tasks such as making network diagrams, expanding your network, finding appliances that need critical updates, or resolving performance bottlenecks. Find out more details about ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure management services.
- ProSight Reporting: In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Applications
ProSight Reporting is a growing suite of real-time and in-depth management reporting plug-ins designed to integrate with the industry's leading ticketing and remote network monitoring programs such as ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting uses Microsoft Graph and utilizes color coding to surface and contextualize key issues such as inconsistent support follow-through or endpoints with out-of-date AVs. By exposing ticketing or network health problems concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting improves productivity, lowers management overhead, and saves money. For more information, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.
- ProSight Data Protection Services: Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
Progent has worked with leading backup technology companies to create 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 operations and allow non-disruptive backup and fast recovery of critical files, apps, images, and Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. ProSight DPS lets your business protect against data loss caused by equipment breakdown, natural calamities, fire, malware like ransomware, human mistakes, malicious insiders, or software bugs. Managed backup services in the ProSight Data Protection Services portfolio include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight ECHO Backup using Barracuda dedicated hardware, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent service representative can help you to identify which of these managed backup services are best suited for your network.
- 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 technology of leading data security vendors to deliver centralized control and world-class protection for all your email traffic. The powerful structure of Email Guard managed service integrates a Cloud Protection Layer with an on-premises gateway device to offer complete protection against spam, viruses, Denial of Service Attacks, DHAs, and other email-borne threats. The cloud filter acts as a preliminary barricade and keeps the vast majority of unwanted email from reaching your security perimeter. This reduces your vulnerability to external threats and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises security gateway appliance provides a further layer of inspection for inbound email. For outbound email, the onsite security gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, DLP, and email encryption. The on-premises gateway can also help Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that originates and ends within your corporate firewall. For more details, see Email Guard spam and content filtering.
- ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Remediation, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
Progent's Duo MFA service plans utilize Cisco's Duo technology to protect against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports single-tap identity confirmation on Apple iOS, Android, and other personal devices. With 2FA, whenever you log into a secured online account and give your password you are asked to verify your identity via a device that only you possess and that is accessed using a separate network channel. A broad selection of devices can be used for this added form of ID validation such as a smartphone or wearable, a hardware token, a landline phone, etc. You may register multiple verification devices. To learn more about ProSight Duo two-factor identity authentication services, see Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services.
- Progent's Outsourced/Shared Call Desk: Support Desk Managed Services
Progent's Help Center managed services permit your IT group to outsource Support Desk services to Progent or divide activity for Service Desk support seamlessly between your internal network support resources and Progent's extensive roster of certified IT support engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service offers a transparent supplement to your internal network support team. End user interaction with the Help Desk, provision of support, issue escalation, trouble ticket creation and tracking, performance metrics, and maintenance of the support database are cohesive regardless of whether issues are taken care of by your internal IT support organization, by Progent's team, or a mix of the two. Learn more about Progent's outsourced/shared Help Center services.
- Active Protection Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Identification and Remediation
Progent's Active Protection Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection (EPP) managed service that incorporates cutting edge behavior-based analysis technology to defend endpoint devices as well as servers and VMs against modern malware attacks like ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely escape legacy signature-matching AV tools. Progent ASM services safeguard on-premises and cloud-based resources and offers a unified platform to automate the complete malware attack progression including protection, detection, mitigation, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Top capabilities include one-click rollback using Windows VSS and real-time system-wide immunization against newly discovered threats. Read more about Progent's ransomware protection and recovery services.
- ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service is a cloud-based IT documentation management service that makes it easy to create, maintain, retrieve and safeguard information about your network infrastructure, procedures, business apps, and services. You can quickly locate passwords or IP addresses and be warned automatically about upcoming expirations of SSLs or domains. By updating and organizing your IT documentation, you can save up to 50% of time wasted looking for critical information about your IT network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a centralized location for storing and sharing all documents required for managing your business network like recommended procedures and self-service instructions. ProSight IT Asset Management also supports advanced automation for gathering and relating IT data. Whether you're planning enhancements, performing regular maintenance, or responding to a crisis, ProSight IT Asset Management gets you the information you require the instant you need it. Read more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.
- Patch Management: Patch Management Services
Progent's support services for patch management offer businesses of any size a flexible and affordable solution for evaluating, validating, scheduling, applying, and documenting software and firmware updates to your dynamic IT network. Besides optimizing the security and reliability of your IT network, Progent's software/firmware update management services permit your IT team to concentrate on line-of-business projects and tasks that deliver the highest business value from your network. Find out more about Progent's software/firmware update management services.
- ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted VMs at Progent's World-class Data Center
With ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small organization can have its key servers and apps hosted in a secure Tier III data center on a fast virtual host configured and managed by Progent's IT support experts. Under the ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the client owns the data, the OS platforms, and the apps. Since the environment is virtualized, it can be ported immediately to a different hosting environment without a lengthy and technically risky configuration process. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, your business is not tied a single hosting provider. Find out more details about ProSight Virtual Hosting services.
- ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection solution that incorporates SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior-based machine learning technology to guard physical and virtual endpoint devices against modern malware assaults like ransomware and email phishing, which easily evade legacy signature-based AV products. ProSight Active Security Monitoring protects on-premises and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to manage the entire threat lifecycle including filtering, detection, mitigation, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Key capabilities include one-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and real-time network-wide immunization against new attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. Read more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) next-generation 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 offer affordable multi-layer security for physical servers and virtual machines, workstations, smartphones, and Exchange Server. ProSight ESP uses contextual security and advanced machine learning for round-the-clock monitoring and reacting to security threats from all attack vectors. ProSight ESP delivers firewall protection, penetration alerts, device management, and web filtering via leading-edge tools incorporated within one agent managed from a single console. Progent's security and virtualization consultants can assist your business to plan and configure a ProSight ESP environment that addresses your organization's specific needs and that allows you achieve and demonstrate compliance with government and industry information security regulations. Progent will help you specify and configure security policies that ProSight ESP will manage, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and respond to alerts that call for urgent action. Progent can also help you to set up and verify a backup and restore solution such as ProSight Data Protection Services so you can get back in business rapidly from a potentially disastrous security attack such as ransomware. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified endpoint protection and Exchange email filtering.
For 24x7x365 Fort Myers Crypto Removal Experts, contact Progent at 800-462-8800 or go to Contact Progent.