Ransomware is a stealthy form of malware that poses a risk to businesses, their employees, their customers, and the community as a whole.
Ransomware is a stealthy form of malware that poses a risk to businesses, their employees, their customers, and the community as a whole. Partnering with a cloud service provider that places a high priority on security can make a big difference in preventing an attack on the company and the data it holds.
According to recent research, more than one-third of organisations around the world—representing both the private and public sectors—have been the target of a ransomware attack. The organisations in the production and financial services sectors are the most frequently targeted.
The economic impact of ransomware attacks is also on the rise. This becomes even more shocking due to the fact that the majority of organisations give in to the demands of the attackers and pay the ransom in order to decrypt and preserve their data.
There are a number of important reasons that ransomware is becoming more prevalent. Decentralisation, the increased use of cloud services and personal devices that are not under the control of a consolidated IT security team, and all too frequently, poor security hygiene in the office, at home, and while travelling have all contributed to an increase in the risk associated with remote work.
Because of this, businesses are ramping up their cybersecurity defences. They begin with a zero-trust approach and include a significant expansion of their long-standing security controls already in place. In addition to this, organisations need to assess the current state of their security protocols and infrastructure. They also need to develop appropriate recovery safeguards and educate users on appropriate security procedures.
Here are some ways to mitigate ransomware attacks. By taking proper safeguards, you can reduce the risk of ransomware.
It is critical that all of the software you use is from reputable sources and has the most recent updates installed. Changelogs, often known as “What’s new” displays or documents, might be a hassle to read. However, they are a valuable source of information that detail the steps that the developer took to address security flaws and reduce vulnerabilities.
Make sure you read them all the way through to get a clear picture of the issues that they addressed.
To strengthen their defences against cyberattacks, every organisation, regardless of size or industry, should make this action their top priority. A ransomware attack can be extremely damaging to a company’s operations. But even that may not result in complete data loss if the company has a reliable backup mechanism in place for the most important of its files. In the event of a ransomware attack, a local backup of files and a secondary backup of information, like files backed up in the cloud, can help rescue enterprise data through redundancy in backups.
Every employee doesn’t need to have access to every system or data. Therefore, businesses have to implement a well-known concept called role-based access control, more commonly referred to as RBAC. Users only get the absolute minimum access and privileges to systems that they require in order to carry out their job functions inside the scope of RBAC.
It is important to verify the sender’s address rather than just their name, before opening any file/files that are attached to a message; the latter can be fabricated. Check to see if the email address’s domain name (the part that comes after the @ symbol) is correct.
The attachments that pose the greatest threat to users are those that contain packages, such as executable or dynamic link library (DLL) files. Nevertheless, you should be wary of any kind of file that is connected to a program that automatically launches it. As a result, it’s wise to avoid opening any connected files directly from the email. It’s best to save it to a folder and then run an antivirus program on it.
To protect sensitive assets and high-risk users, Multi-Factor Authentication is strongly advised. This method can help thwart attacks that rely on credential-based access or privilege elevation, such as ransomware.
Employ the use of Authentication Services that provide Multi-Factor Authentication to protect enterprise assets. Also, since you need more than one verification method, it will be difficult for ransomware attacks.
Your antivirus should be able to remove ransomware as soon as it attempts to get into your machine. Behaviour monitoring is now a standard feature in most modern antivirus programs. Some of them, as opposed to scanning for established threat patterns, focus solely on watching malicious actions in their process of operation. This behaviour-based approach is gaining popularity as research shows it to be effective.
Some anti-ransomware programs restrict access to certain parts of a computer, like the desktop or the documents folder. Every time an unidentified software tries to gain access, the user receives a warning message that gives them the option of allowing or denying the access.
The aftermath of a ransomware attack is always difficult to clean up. Getting a decryption key, even if it works, usually involves a lot of cleanup effort. This is because the attackers have taken down systems and databases that weren’t intended to be shut down quickly. Network rebuilding from backups takes time if you don’t pay for it.
It is important to keep in mind that you are dealing with criminals; therefore, the closer a corporation comes to paying a ransom, the more evidence it requires that the attackers genuinely have what they claim to have.
Cove Identity is your personal ultra-secure digital locker. Get maximum control over your data with minimal effort.
.jpg)