Salt Lake City Ransomware Defense and Removal Consulting

Ransomware has been weaponized by cyber extortionists and rogue governments, representing a possibly lethal threat to companies that are successfully attacked. The latest variations of crypto-ransomware target everything, including online backup, making even selective restoration a challenging and costly exercise. New variations of ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Mailto (aka Netwalker), DopplePaymer, LockBit and Nephilim have made the headlines, displacing Locky, Spora, and CryptoWall in prominence, sophistication, and destructiveness.

Most crypto-ransomware breaches are the result of innocuous-seeming emails that have malicious hyperlinks or attachments, and many are so-called "zero-day" attacks that can escape the defenses of traditional signature-based antivirus filters. While user education and up-front detection are critical to protect against ransomware attacks, leading practices dictate that you assume some attacks will inevitably succeed and that you implement a strong backup mechanism that allows you to recover rapidly with little if any damage.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Report is a low-cost service built around an online interview with a Progent security expert experienced in ransomware defense and recovery. During this interview Progent will cooperate directly with your Salt Lake City IT management staff to gather critical data about your security setup and backup environment. Progent will use this information to generate a Basic Security and Best Practices Report documenting how to follow best practices for configuring and administering your security and backup systems to block or recover from a crypto-ransomware assault.

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

Cybersecurity

• Proper use of admin accounts
• Assigning NTFS and SMB permissions
• Optimal firewall settings
• Secure RDP connections
• Guidance for AntiVirus tools identification and configuration

• Split permission model for backup protection
• Backing up key servers such as AD
• Geographically dispersed backups including cloud backup to Microsoft Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts or deletes a victim's files so they cannot be used or are made publicly available. Ransomware sometimes locks the target's computer. To avoid the damage, the victim is required to send a specified ransom, typically via a crypto currency like Bitcoin, within a short time window. It is never certain that paying the extortion price will recover the damaged files or avoid its exposure to the public. Files can be altered or deleted across a network depending on the victim's write permissions, and you cannot reverse engineer the military-grade encryption technologies used on the hostage files. A common ransomware attack vector is spoofed email, whereby the target is tricked into interacting with by a social engineering technique known as spear phishing. This makes the email message to look as though it came from a trusted source. Another common attack vector is a poorly protected RDP port.

CryptoLocker ushered in the modern era of ransomware in 2013, and the damage caused by different versions of ransomware is estimated at billions of dollars annually, roughly doubling every other year. Famous attacks are Locky, and NotPetya. Recent headline variants like Ryuk, Maze and Spora are more elaborate and have wreaked more damage than older strains. Even if your backup procedures allow your business to restore your encrypted data, you can still be threatened by so-called exfiltration, where stolen documents are made public. Because additional variants of ransomware are launched daily, there is no guarantee that traditional signature-matching anti-virus tools will detect a new malware. If threat does show up in an email, it is important that your end users have been taught to identify phishing tricks. Your ultimate protection is a solid scheme for performing and retaining remote backups and the use of reliable restoration platforms.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Susceptibility Audit in Salt Lake City
For pricing details and to learn more about how Progent's ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Susceptibility Evaluation can bolster your defense against ransomware in Salt Lake City, phone Progent at 800-462-8800 or visit Contact Progent.