Irving Ransomware Defense and Cleanup Expertise

Ransomware has been widely adopted by the major cyber-crime organizations and bad-actor states, posing a potentially existential risk to companies that are successfully attacked. The latest variations of crypto-ransomware target all vulnerable resources, including online backup, making even selective recovery a long and expensive process. New variations of crypto-ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, Phobos, Conti and Egregor have made the headlines, replacing WannaCry, Spora, and NotPetya in notoriety, elaborateness, and destructive impact.

Most crypto-ransomware infections are the result of innocuous-looking emails with malicious links or attachments, and many are "zero-day" variants that elude detection by traditional signature-based antivirus (AV) filters. Although user education and frontline identification are critical to protect your network against ransomware attacks, leading practices demand that you take for granted some attacks will inevitably succeed and that you put in place a strong backup solution that permits you to restore files and services rapidly with little if any damage.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Checkup is an ultra-affordable service centered around an online interview with a Progent security expert experienced in ransomware defense and recovery. During this interview Progent will cooperate with your Irving IT management staff to gather critical information about your cybersecurity profile and backup processes. Progent will use this information to generate a Basic Security and Best Practices Report detailing how to follow leading practices for implementing and administering your cybersecurity and backup systems to prevent or recover from a ransomware attack.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Report highlights key issues associated with crypto-ransomware prevention and restoration recovery. The report addresses:

Security

• Effective allocation and use of admin accounts
• Appropriate NTFS and SMB permissions
• Proper firewall configuration
• Secure Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access
• Guidance for AntiVirus tools selection and configuration

• Split permission architecture for backup protection
• Protecting key servers such as Active Directory
• Geographically dispersed backups including cloud backup to Microsoft Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts or deletes files so they cannot be used or are made publicly available. Ransomware often locks the victim's computer. To prevent the carnage, the victim is required to send a certain amount of money, usually via a crypto currency like Bitcoin, within a short time window. It is never certain that paying the ransom will recover the damaged data or prevent its publication. Files can be encrypted or deleted across a network based on the victim's write permissions, and you cannot reverse engineer the military-grade encryption technologies used on the compromised files. A typical ransomware attack vector is booby-trapped email, whereby the victim 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 vulnerability is an improperly secured Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) port.

CryptoLocker ushered in the modern era of ransomware in 2013, and the monetary losses attributed to by different versions of ransomware is estimated at billions of dollars annually, more than doubling every two years. Notorious examples are WannaCry, and NotPetya. Recent headline threats like Ryuk, Sodinokibi and TeslaCrypt are more sophisticated and have wreaked more havoc than older strains. Even if your backup procedures allow you to recover your encrypted files, you can still be hurt by exfiltration, where stolen data are exposed to the public. Because additional versions of ransomware are launched daily, there is no certainty that conventional signature-based anti-virus tools will block the latest attack. If an attack does appear in an email, it is critical that your end users have been taught to identify phishing tricks. Your ultimate defense is a sound scheme for scheduling and keeping remote backups and the use of dependable recovery tools.

Contact Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Susceptibility Review in Irving
For pricing details and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Readiness Consultation can enhance your defense against crypto-ransomware in Irving, phone Progent at 800-462-8800 or visit Contact Progent.