How to protect from ransomware

In our previous blog we talked about how cyberthreats are developing in our increasingly online world, including new styles of ransomware attacks designed to compromise the safety of businesses’ data and systems.

In this blog, we look at how ransomware attackers work to hijack your operation and specifically what you can do to prevent such an attack.

Ransomware attacks are…

Ransomware attacks are when a cybercriminal works to deny access to the system and/or data you need, until you’ve met their demand, usually payment.

Most common ransomware attacks

By far the most common way to suffer a ransomware attack is via a phishing email. This is an email that aims to convince you to open an attachment or click on a link, which then downloads the harmful ransomware to your system.

How ransomware disables your business

The ransomware then carries out a variety of harms to your system that directly threaten the ability of your business to safely continue, or even at all. A ransomware attack could leave you vulnerable in a number of, or all of, the following ways:

• Unable to access your system 
• Compromised/encrypted data 
• Compromised/encrypted backup 
• Domain hijacked

Ransomware and data exfiltration

Data exfiltration, or extrusion, is a security breach, which can be caused by ransomware, where a business’s data is gained access to, copied and transferred. These types of attacks by cybercriminals are becoming increasingly common and are notoriously difficult to detect.

Via the ransomware, data is searched for and moved outside the business’s network. But as the traffic of data movement will often effectively mimic the business’s own network traffic, substantial data can be lost before the attack is even detected.

Targeting areas of weak security

Social engineering and targeted attacks to a business to seduce users, not alert to the dangers, into clicking on links and site-redirects are one way cybercriminals work, via phishing emails.

Targeting businesses using weak passwords

And hackers will specifically target organisations with weak security, particularly where systems rely on common or vendor-set passwords easy to crack. Statistically, these organisations and businesses with weak authentication methods suffer the most from these attacks since hackers can gain relatively easy access via their malicious remote applications.

How to be protected against ransomware

There is plenty a business can do to operate more securely and plenty Cultrix can do to help:

• Minimum IT coverage with Cultrix of your devices connects you to our monitoring and management system to cover vital Windows updates, software patching and other monitoring and security measures to keep your systems as secure as possible and within oversight 
• Our vulnerability report will check your operating and software, for instance, an old version of Windows or Office may not be supported, antivirus may not be up to date and devices not encrypted, and there may be open ports to your system 
• Actions to eradicate vulnerabilities, for example, updating software, setting admin and user access rights, setting up two-factor authentication, limiting staff access and downloads 
• Ensure staff are trained and able to spot fake emails and redirects to enable your everyday operation to be guarded against ransomware cyberattack

And there are many other services that can aid your business in keeping safe, protected against an attack that could disable your operation, for example web filtering, spam filtering and phishing protection.

But, far and away, the best place to start, is IT cover and support.

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