Reduce the Risk of Ransomware

By Tyler Lewan

Imagine being turned away at the door of a hospital with a serious medical condition because their complete IT infrastructure is shut down. Or a police station not being able to receive  emergency calls because their phone system is unavailable. It’s a scary thought, right? Lucky for us, there are organizations like The National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF) which assist government agencies with a joint-sealed ransomware factsheet that focuses on current ransomware threats along with prevention and mitigation techniques in order to ensure these critical services are remaining safe from attacks.

The goal of the NCIJTF is to educate the public on ways to prevent cyber attacks as well as to impose higher sanctions on the criminals that perform these attacks. The most common techniques to infect agencies with a ransomware attack are email phishing campaigns, remote desktop protocol (RDP) vulnerabilities and software vulnerabilities. They cite the following as best practices to minimize risk towards ransomware attacks:

• isaster Recovery Solutions that perform multiple backups of your systems
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on your email or important applications of the business
• Automatic patching of systems
• Compliant up-to-date solutions
• Understand your incident response plan

While you can never say you are 100% safe from an attack on your Organization, the methods above support a quicker transitions from the attack occurring to having your business back up and running in an efficient time. Statistics show that the revenue lost during a ransomware attack are 10x the amount of the actual ransomware payment.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) came out with a Reduce the Risk of Ransomware Campaign in January of this year that encourages public and private sector organizations to perform best practices and implement solutions that can help reduce their cybersecurity risks and threats. They will use their social media platforms to expose light on the key behaviors and actions to combat these attacks. They’ve also include a website that provides “a one stop shop” for resources regarding alerts/statements, guides, services, facts sheets, infographics and much more.

https://www.cisa.gov/

It’s incredible to see the way that top level security Organizations are starting to truly spread the importance behind a proactive mindset regarding cyber security solutions and best practices for all Organizations.