Minneapolis Ransomware Protection and Restoration Expertise

Ransomware has been weaponized by cybercriminals and malicious states, posing a potentially lethal threat to companies that fall victim. Current versions of ransomware target all vulnerable resources, including backup, making even selective restoration a long and costly exercise. Novel variations of crypto-ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Mailto (aka Netwalker), Phobos, Conti and Egregor have emerged, displacing Locky, Cerber, and Petya in prominence, elaborateness, and destructive impact.

90% of crypto-ransomware penetrations come from innocent-seeming emails that have dangerous links or file attachments, and a high percentage are so-called "zero-day" variants that can escape detection by traditional signature-matching antivirus (AV) filters. While user training and frontline identification are important to defend your network against ransomware, best practices demand that you take for granted some attacks will inevitably get through and that you put in place a solid backup mechanism that enables you to restore files and services quickly with minimal damage.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Vulnerability Report is a low-cost service built around a remote interview with a Progent security consultant skilled in ransomware protection and repair. In the course of this assessment Progent will cooperate directly with your Minneapolis IT management staff to collect pertinent data concerning your security configuration and backup environment. Progent will use this data to generate a Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment documenting how to follow leading practices for configuring and managing your security and backup systems to block or recover from a crypto-ransomware attack.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Report highlights vital areas related to ransomware defense and restoration recovery. The report covers:

Cybersecurity

• Proper allocation and use of admin accounts
• Assigning NTFS and SMB (Server Message Block) permissions
• Optimal firewall setup
• Secure Remote Desktop Protocol access
• Recommend AntiVirus (AV) filtering identification and deployment

• Split permission architecture for backup protection
• Protecting critical servers such as Active Directory
• Offsite backups including cloud backup to Microsoft Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a variety of malware that encrypts or deletes a victim's files so they are unusable or are made publicly available. Crypto-ransomware often locks the target's computer. To prevent the damage, the victim is required to pay a specified ransom, usually in the form of a crypto currency such as Bitcoin, within a short period of time. It is never certain that delivering the ransom will recover the damaged data or avoid its publication. Files can be encrypted or deleted throughout a network based on the victim's write permissions, and you cannot reverse engineer the military-grade encryption algorithms used on the compromised files. A common ransomware attack vector is spoofed email, in which the victim is tricked into responding to by a social engineering exploit called spear phishing. This causes the email message to appear to come from a familiar sender. Another common vulnerability is a poorly protected RDP port.

The ransomware variant CryptoLocker opened the modern era of crypto-ransomware in 2013, and the damage attributed to by the many strains of ransomware is said to be billions of dollars annually, more than doubling every two years. Notorious attacks include WannaCry, and Petya. Current headline threats like Ryuk, Sodinokibi and TeslaCrypt are more sophisticated and have caused more havoc than older versions. Even if your backup/recovery processes enable you to restore your encrypted files, you can still be threatened by exfiltration, where stolen documents 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 a new malware. If threat does appear in an email, it is critical that your end users have learned to identify social engineering tricks. Your ultimate protection is a sound process for performing and keeping remote backups and the deployment of dependable recovery tools.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Readiness Assessment in Minneapolis
For pricing information and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Preparedness Consultation can enhance your protection against ransomware in Minneapolis, phone Progent at 800-462-8800 or see Contact Progent.