Ransomware: Persistent & hardly preventable?
Ransomware is almost like an "old acquaintance" among cyber threats. Encryption on computers with the aim of extortion happens since around 30 years. Companies that have to deal with a ransomware attack also to deal with data breaches, loss, of course, costly business downtime and recovery efforts. Increasingly, there are police and legal consequences - for attackers.
For more than 30 years, has been one of the "most popular" types of attack. Today, many mails are circulating with the sheer threat of DDoS attacks, which only a ransom payment can prevent. You can read more about these RDDoS in the article "DDoS - Keep the threat on your radar". Ransomware is also extorted by threatening data compromise. The concern here is that data would be made public if payment is not made, which can be critical, especially if reputational damage is imminent, but a payment can never include a guarantee that data would be restored or that the ransomware would be deleted.
Why SMEs and administrations fall victim to ransomware attacks
Small businesses, administrations or research institutions often have no or very small IT departments that could deal with cybersecurity. In this age of remote work and , file sharing and working remotely on organizational networks are potential vulnerabilities that can make it easy for attackers. When business capability is threatened, smaller institutions in particular feel compelled to pay up quickly - assuming they can quickly regain access to their mission-critical, sensitive data and information and keep the compromise a secret.
How is ransomware spread?
Often, organizations are attacked via USB and removable media (lack of interface control), exploit kits, zero-day exploits, email (via spam), so-called malvertising (harmless-seeming Internet advertising executes / reloads malicious code) - or, particularly perfidious, as a service (affiliates).
How you can protect yourself against Ransomware
In the event of an attack, you should definitely file a criminal complaint with the relevant authorities. They are quite successful as the case of the ransomware group Egrego, whose members were arrested thanks to the cooperation of Ukrainian and French law enforcement agencies shows.
We advise companies and organizations such as government agencies to make regular backups of their systems and data. Store them on different media, placed in different locations.
Comprehensive protection for all endpoints in your organization offers a secure browser solution that includes a shielded virtualized browser for accessing external websites. Web Application Firewalls prevent your websites from becoming a gateway for ransomware, and set up VPN access for employees.
Ransomware is difficult for non-experts to detect, which is why you should rely on various protection mechanisms. One important means of protection is employee training. To do this, we recommend regularly reading our news articles and attending our webinars. Employees who know that ransomware exists are naturally better able to identify attacks.