Level up your Security and Protect your Business Against Ransomware

In recent years ransomware has surged and it continues to do so. Businesses are up against new more sophisticated attacks that aim to disrupt business continuity and steal sensitive data. The rates at which attacks are increasing is alarming!

• A business is attacked every 11 seconds
• 80% of businesses have experienced an attack in recent years
• 25% of all attacks involve ransomware
• 94% of cyber-attacks use email

With that said, it’s a no-brainer that businesses and especially SMBs need to beef up their security and realise that they are facing a major challenge trying to protect their systems against these types of attacks.

Below is a list of tips on how you can increase the level of security in your organisation:

1. Stop using inadequate legacy approaches

If you’re still using traditional antivirus and malware protection software, then chances are you’ll be hacked soon. Older solutions are unable to detect and protect against modern threats. They rely on signature matching — which cannot identify previously unknown zero-day threats — to detect known malware threats during the initial intrusion. In addition, they are unable to block ransomware in time to prevent corruption and as a result recovery from an attack is nearly impossible.

2. Implement the NIST Cyber Security Framework

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Cyber Security Framework is a set of guidelines and best practices designed to help organizations manage and reduce cybersecurity risks. NIST is based in the US, however, their framework is implemented all around the world. The framework provides a flexible and comprehensive approach to managing cybersecurity risks by organising information, identifying vulnerabilities, and implementing controls to mitigate those risks. The NIST framework is widely recognized and adopted by organizations of all sizes and industries as a valuable tool to strengthen their cybersecurity and protect against threats.

The steps:

1. Identify:
   1. Software & hardware inventory.
   2. Data classification – identify and categorise data based on its level of security.
   3. Unprotected endpoint discovery – involves identifying all endpoints that are connected to your network and ensuring they’re secure.
2.  Protect:
   1. Vulnerability assessment – identify potential weaknesses in your network.
   2. Patch management – ensure all apps and programmes are up to date.
   3. Exploit prevention – intrusion detection and prevention systems and anti-malware software — to prevent potential vulnerabilities.
   4. Backup integration – regularly backing up all data and applications.
   5. Data loss prevention – prevent data leakage and strengthen regulatory compliance.
   6. Security configuration management – ensure all devices are configured according to latest security best practices.
3.  Detect:
   1. Subscribe to an emerging threats feed
   2. Search for indicators of compromise of emerging threats so that you’re aware of the signs you should look out for.
   3. Install the latest anti-malware and anti-ransomware software.
   4. URL filtering – block access to suspicious, dangerous or unknown URLs
   5. Email security – implement robust email security measures such as filtering and encryption.
4.  Respond:
   1. Rapid incident analysis – quickly analyse the incident to determine the severity.
   2. Workload remediation – isolate any affected systems or apps.
   3. Investigate – use forensic backups to investigate and analyse the cause.
   4. Remote connections – to access affected systems and applications to further investigate the cause.
5.  Recover:
   1. Ensure disaster recovery is pre-integrated to quickly restore data and systems to their pre-incident state.
   2. Rapid rollback – quickly reverse any changes made by the attacker.
   3. One-click mass recovery by end users – enables end users to quickly recover their systems and minimise downtime.

And there you have it. The basic steps to ensure your business is protected from malware and ransomware threats. The only remaining question is whether you have the internal resources to implement these security measures. Get in touch with our team and we’ll be happy to help secure your business, its data and customers.