Preventing Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware is a major threat to every business. In a nutshell, ransomware attacks are cyber extortion, where malicious software penetrates your computer systems and then encrypts your data, holding it ransom until you agree to pay up.

Like many other forms of malware, ransomware is often introduced as the “payload” of a phishing campaign, where the attacker tries to entice you to download a file, generally in the form of an email attachment or on a malicious website.Ransomware is particularly malicious because encrypted files typically can’t be decrypted without the attacker’s private encryption key. In other words, even if you remove the malware from your device, you still won’t be able to access your files without the attacker decrypting them.

In addition to the cost of the ransom amount itself, ransomware disrupts your business, which causes revenue losses and extra operational expenses. In fact, it’s estimated that it costs on average more than $84,000 for organisations to recover from a single ransomware attack.

It’s crucial to protect your business from falling victim to a ransomware attack, which means you should have a plan in place to do so.

To develop a plan, it’s important to understand the various stages of an attack.

4 stages of a ransomware attack

1. Targeting: Potential victims are sent a malicious file. Once someone downloads the file, for example, an email attachment from someone who seems to be a known associate, they become a target.

2. Execution and Encryption: The ransomware program begins to work. It detects files to attack and encrypts these using the attacker’s remote private encryption key.

3. Demands: The victim is prompted with a ransom demand message about the attack, letting them know that their files are encrypted, and they’ll need to pay to be able to access them again. Payment details (often a cryptocurrency address) are provided.

4. User response: The victim decides whether or not they want to pay the ransom. If payment is not made, the files will remain encrypted. While the user may be able to remove the malware with antivirus software, this will not decrypt their files. However, even if the ransom is paid, the user has no guarantee that the attacker will decrypt the files.

There are various types of ransomware attacks, including scareware (where the attacker tries to scare or threaten the victim into taking action), crypto-ransomware (when the ransomware attack demands payment in a cryptocurrency, as these payments cannot be reversed), and locker ransomware (when the victim is locked out of their device completely, which means they cannot even run their antivirus software).

3 steps for preventing ransomware

To prevent a ransomware attack, there are three key areas you need to address in your business:

1. Understand and audit your vulnerabilities: Where are the weak points in your organisation? For example, given that ransomware typically comes from phishing attacks, are your employees vulnerable to email phishing campaigns? Phishing simulations can help proactively detect weaknesses and can also be used to test your defences.

2. Put defence measures in place, proactively: Businesses today need a Security Operations (SecOps) team in place that is able to quickly triage, investigate, and respond to potential phishing attacks in real-time. They should also have automated incident response systems in place to ensure that responses to threats are immediate. While many organisations do not have this capacity available internally, specialist providers have evolved specifically to meet these needs on an outsourced basis.

3. Implement advanced protection tools: Malware and cyber threats evolve at a rapid rate. Traditional protection tools often cannot detect and dispatch the latest threats. While firewalls, URL filters, and anti-spam software certainly have a place, they are not enough to cope with sophisticated attack attempts. Tools such as advanced malware and URL protection and visual learning technologies are examples of more advanced protection mechanisms that can be deployed to help detect and prevent evolving threats much faster than manual analysis.

Get in touch with us for more information about our phishing simulations, cybersecurity awareness training, and complete cybersecurity solutions. Whatever your business needs, we can help to assist you in protecting your organisation and its data from ransomware attacks.