It is only a matter of time until we start hearing the news stories of ransomware attackers combining data theft into the equation. Currently, the only stories about threats and data have been highly targeted attacks like Ashley Madison and Sony.
Imagine, as the CEO of the company, your office manager or Chief Technology Officer comes to you and says, “We’ve been hit with ransomware. If we don’t pay, not only do we not have access to our data, but they will sell all of our client information on the Dark Web.” This will add an entirely new dimension to the ransomware threat. You won’t be able to restore the data and only deal with the downtime. Now you have to worry about seeing your name in the local paper as another data breach victim.
But keep your head up – it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some pretty simple steps you can take to protect yourself from ransomware and hackers in general.
- Patch Management
- At this point, it feels like a broken record, but patching is the simplest thing you can do to protect your network. There are plenty of tools available to accomplish patch management. Everything from free to highly sophisticated, complete network management systems.
- Every year, the big data breach and cyber security reports like HP’s Cyber Risk Report 2016 and IBM’s Cost of Data Breach Study consistently report the most successful attack entry points are for patches that are at least one year old. That sounds insane, but it has been true for the last several years. Companies still don’t take it seriously. Start patching, period.
- These vulnerability attacks generally come in through phishing email campaigns, but can come from many different attack vectors. Compromised websites, ad networks, and TypoSquatting are a few more common routes.
- Phish your own employees
- Email and cyber training go a long way to keep the bad guys out. KnowBe4.com has a system to test, quantify and train employees on safe email use. You create or use templated email phishing campaigns and KnowBe4 collects and reports on what percentage of users would have infected your network. There are open source tools to accomplish the same thing if you have the staff to manage it: https://github.com/sptorg/sptoolkit.
- CryptoStopper.io is the next evolution in ransomware containment.
- Prevention and training only go so far. Even with the best prevention system you still can’t stop all ransomware. WatchPoint created an innovative way to detect, isolate and stop ransomware from destroying your data. The existing tools to prevent ransomware weren’t working, so we developed a solution called CryptoStopper.io to stop the spread of ransomware in a matter of seconds.
- CryptoStopper.io runs at the server level to watch your file shares. When ransomware starts trying to encrypt the files on your shares, it correlates the offending user and disconnects them from the network, stopping the attack and saving your files.
People often ask, “Why do these geeks sitting in their mom’s basement want to damage our systems and data?” First off, it isn’t the solitary hacker anymore. These are organized criminals operating as businesses, with support staff and structure. Cybercrime is now bigger than drug trafficking. In 2015, drug trade worldwide was a $575 billion enterprise. Cybercrime overtook drug trafficking as a $600 billion industry.
It is going to get worse before it gets better. Protect yourself before you become the next victim.
WatchPoint has developed CryptoStopper.io to stop ransomware in its tracks. CryptoStopper.io continuously monitors your system for ransomware activity. When ransomware is detected, it will isolate the offending user, notify you of the infection and prevent any damage from occurring.
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Contact us today to learn how you can become protected from the ever-prevalent threat of ransomware.
