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Ransomware Victims and How to Respond

In this article we will cover ransomware victims and how to respond based on managed IT services providers.

Approximately half of organizations are victims of ransomware attacks more than once, according to a study of over 830 IT professionals worldwide.

  • 80 percent believe cyberattacks are on the rise
  • 40 percent report more than one cyberattacks.
  • 60 percent of unsolicited emails cause initial infection
  • 7 percent of unsolicited emails affect cloud applications.
  • In 70% of cases, multiple devices are infected, emphasizing the importance of speed-to-detection.
  • Detecting such threats takes an average of two hours for 40% of IT departments.
  • The 82% of respondents who have recovered data from backups is encouraging.

Multi-layered cyber security defense is essential to protecting your system from ransomware. Detection and monitoring of cyber threats must be automated. This affects ransomware victims and how to respond.

Data protection protects the bottom line. There’s no surprise that backups are being used to recover from ransomware attacks. Preventative planning can greatly reduce the risk of data recovery, not to mention the impact on business. This should be discussed with your managed IT services provider and IT department.

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What response should you have to ransomware?

Ransomware attacks have increased, and half of businesses have been attacked by ransomware in the past year, according to a recent cyber security study. Organizations must decide whether to pay when suffering a ransomware attack if their managed IT services provider or IT department cannot recover from backups.

What are the demands of ransom viruses?

Cybercrime-as-a-service offerings and world-class customer support make ransomware a business, restoring victims’ files quickly once the ransom is paid. It’s a service business based on bad principles, which would be celebrated as an accomplishment despite its annual revenue approaching $1 billion. The ransomware business involves affiliates redirecting exploit kits for a cut from hacker or cyber criminals.

Cyberattacks must be planned before they occur, detected, and stopped during them, and recovered from afterward.

Here are five steps to combat ransomware. This affects ransomware victims and how to respond.

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Step one. Modernize Cyber Security Defenses

While signature-based anti-virus solutions are good, they cannot prevent sophisticated ransomware attacks. They are considered a reactive approach to cyber security protection compared to next generation antivirus with building artificial intelligence. In addition, next generation firewalls with active firewall security services differ greatly from traditional firewalls. By gaining comprehensive visibility and access to extensive details on how the malware entered the organization’s environment in the first place, organizations can prepare for the possibility of a cyberattack.

Next-generation anti-malware and firewall solutions are essential in a managed IT services provider or IT departments arsenals of tools to stop ransomware attacks from hackers or cybercriminals.

Step two. Structure Your IT infrastructure

Point solutions can sometimes be effective, but not when it comes to ransomware. Ransomware and other pervasive cyberattacks require an organization’s cloud and mobile strategies.

Detection and response solutions that rely on human intervention are not only ineffective but also unaffordable due to today’s automated threats. An architecture that is secure must be automated and orchestrated.

Step three. Proactively Avoid Malware

A hacker or cybercriminal will use malware to spread like a fast-moving cold among airplane passengers if it enters the network. Organizations need to get their managed IT services provider or IT department to compartmentalize data and make malware spread harder. Your organization should use network segmentation strategies as they are crucial to cover ransomware victims and how to respond.

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Step Four. Have a Data Recovery Plan

It is unfortunate that no organization is completely immune to a cyberattack, data breach, or ransomware. When an organization is breached, it is crucial to examine how it will recover. Make sure you are backing up your data first. You must also ensure you have isolated on premises local backups and cloud backups.

Backups are only useful if you can restore them when you need them. Your managed IT services provider or IT department needs to test your backups repeatedly. In addition, file-based recovery might not be enough, so restore the whole system to ensure everything is covered.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about a ransomware attack:

  1. Can you recover from an uncorrupted source immediately if your organization is hit by ransomware?
  2. What are your potential losses or downtime?
  3. What are is the cost of various solutions to protect your organization?

There is no one size fits all solution and different data has different value to hackers, cybercriminals, and your organization.

Step Five. Decide If You Are Going to Pay the Ransom.

Finally, the big question: Should you pay the ransom from the hackers or cybercriminals?

Many organizations have a very hard time addressing this question.  This can include the types of data based on your vertical market like healthcare. Whether it is critical patient-care data that hackers hold hostage or hefty fines imposed when protected patient health information (PHI) is breached because healthcare organizations are prime targets for ransomware attacks. You need to look at the entire picture.

If you do not pay the ransom, any organization should examine its damages.

  1. Can you restore your data from a backup that is undamaged?
  2. Is the business financially and functionally able to function?
  3. Is there a short-term solution to restore rather than pay?

At the end of the day, the decision comes down to how business-critical the compromised data is to the organization. If you do decide to pay, be prepared to negotiate. Generally, you can negotiate the price down, so it may make sense not to pay the first offer.

365 iT SOLUTIONS  is Toronto’s award-winning managed IT services provider that is on of the first CyberSecure Canada certified organizations.

Our complimentary data breach scan will scan the darkweb to see if your company has been compromised by hackers.

We are a boutique Toronto IT consulting firm specializes in award winning Managed IT Services, Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR)IT Support Services, IT Outsourcing Services, Managed Security ServicesTech Support Services,  Cyber Security Training and Dark Web Monitoring, and Cloud Services.

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