Toronto Ransomware Defense and Remediation Services

Ransomware has been weaponized by cyber extortionists and malicious governments, posing a possibly existential threat to companies that are breached. Current versions of ransomware go after all vulnerable resources, including backup, making even partial recovery a challenging and costly process. Novel variations of ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, Phobos, Conti and Nephilim have emerged, replacing WannaCry, Cerber, and NotPetya in prominence, sophistication, and destructiveness.

90% of ransomware penetrations come from innocent-looking emails with dangerous hyperlinks or file attachments, and a high percentage are so-called "zero-day" attacks that elude the defenses of legacy signature-matching antivirus tools. Although user education and frontline identification are important to protect your network against ransomware attacks, leading practices dictate that you assume some malware will inevitably get through and that you prepare a strong backup solution that permits you to restore files and services quickly with little if any losses.

Progent's ProSight Ransomware Preparedness Report is a low-cost service built around an online interview with a Progent cybersecurity expert experienced in ransomware defense and recovery. In the course of this assessment Progent will work with your Toronto network management staff to gather pertinent data about your security profile and backup environment. Progent will utilize this information to produce a Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment detailing how to adhere to leading practices for implementing and administering your security and backup systems to block or recover from a ransomware assault.

Progent's Basic Security and Best Practices Assessment highlights key areas associated with ransomware prevention and restoration recovery. The review covers:

Security

• Effective use of administration accounts
• Assigning NTFS (New Technology File System) and SMB (Server Message Block) authorizations
• Proper firewall settings
• Safe RDP access
• Guidance for AntiVirus (AV) filtering identification and deployment

• Split permission architecture for backup protection
• Backing up key servers such as AD
• Offsite backups with cloud backup to Azure

About Ransomware
Ransomware is a variety of malicious software that encrypts or deletes a victim's files so they cannot be used or are made publicly available. Crypto-ransomware often locks the victim's computer. To prevent the damage, the target is required to pay a certain ransom, typically via a crypto currency such as Bitcoin, within a brief period of time. It is never certain that delivering the ransom will recover the damaged files or prevent its exposure to the public. Files can be encrypted or deleted across a network based on the victim's write permissions, and you cannot reverse engineer the strong encryption technologies used on the hostage files. A common ransomware delivery package is tainted email, whereby the victim is tricked into responding to by a social engineering exploit called spear phishing. This causes the email to appear to come from a familiar sender. Another popular attack vector is an improperly secured Remote Desktop Protocol port.

The ransomware variant CryptoLocker ushered in the modern era of ransomware in 2013, and the monetary losses attributed to by different versions of ransomware is said to be billions of dollars annually, more than doubling every other year. Notorious attacks include WannaCry, and Petya. Current headline threats like Ryuk, Maze and CryptoWall are more sophisticated and have caused more damage than older strains. Even if your backup processes allow you to restore your ransomed files, you can still be threatened by so-called exfiltration, where ransomed documents are made public (known as "doxxing"). Because new versions of ransomware crop up every day, there is no guarantee that conventional signature-based anti-virus tools will block the latest attack. If an attack does appear in an email, it is important that your users have learned to identify social engineering tricks. Your ultimate defense is a sound scheme for scheduling and retaining offsite backups and the deployment of dependable restoration platforms.

Ask Progent About the ProSight Ransomware Readiness Audit in Toronto
For pricing information and to find out more about how Progent's ProSight Crypto-Ransomware Susceptibility Checkup can enhance your defense against crypto-ransomware in Toronto, call Progent at 800-462-8800 or see Contact Progent.