Ransomware has rapidly emerged as the most visible cybersecurity risk playing out across our nation’s networks, locking up private sector organizations and government agencies alike. And that’s only what we’re seeing – many more infections are going unreported, ransoms are being paid, and the vicious ransomware cycle continues on. We strongly urge you to consider ransomware infections as destructive attacks, not an event where you can simply pay off the bad guys and regain control of your network (do you really trust a cybercriminal?).
Ransomware Mitigations to Help You Defend Today and Secure Tomorrow
The below recommendations lay out three sets of straightforward steps any organization can take to manage their risk. These recommendations are written broadly for all levels within an organization. It’s never as easy as it should be, so if you need help, we urge you to reach out for assistance.
Actions for Today – Make Sure You’re Not Tomorrow’s Headline:
- Backup your data, system images, and configurations and keep the backups offline
- Update and patch systems
- Make sure your security solutions are up to date
- Review and exercise your incident response plan
- Pay attention to ransomware events and apply lessons learned
Actions to Recover If Impacted– Don’t Let a Bad Day Get Worse:
- Ask for help! Contact CISA, the FBI, or the Secret Service
- Work with an experienced advisor to help recover from a cyber attack
- Isolate the infected systems and phase your return to operations4.Review the connections of any business relationships (customers, partners, vendors) that touch your network
- Apply business impact assessment findings to prioritize recovery
Actions to Secure Your Environment Going Forward – Don’t Let Yourself be an Easy Mark:
- Practice good cyber hygiene; backup, update, whitelist apps, limit privilege, and use multifactor authentication
- Segment your networks; make it hard for the bad guy to move around and infect multiple systems
- Develop containment strategies; if bad guys get in, make it hard for them to get stuff out
- Know your system’s baseline for recovery
- Review disaster recovery procedures and validate goals with executives
If you need any help with our backup solutions or need one, do not hesitate to contact us at 410-705-5125
Read more about Data Backup and Disaster Recovery here.