In this blog, we will explain the importance of keeping your information protected, as it is the most valuable asset within any company.
What is ransomware?
Ransomware is a virus that arrives directly at your computer, it can remain a few days without being activated. The first thing that this type of attack does is to look for solutions that protect your information. There are public figures that say that Mexico is the second place in Latin America of countries that suffer most from this type of attack, so it does not matter if your company is small, medium, or large, they will look for ways to attack you and do everything possible so you can not recover quickly.
The most important thing is to identify when you are going to be affected and how you are going to be affected; minimizing the risks depends on the customers and suppliers themselves. Backup, replication, business continuity plans should be part of your company’s security strategy.
do you know the consequences that can arise from not having an adequate data protection strategy and how to protect yourself from them?
The costs that arise from this type of ransomware on a global scale are estimated at millions of dollars; this has increased year by year and more in this time of the pandemic. The fact of giving this connectivity to all users remotely creates gaps where they can enter and leave the ‘virus’.
Impact of ransomware on your company in times of covid-19
The impact it generates is very detrimental to companies, mainly what happens is that you lose the information and lose the information translates into large economic losses, but not only that, it is also at stake the reputation.
Imagine the impact that can have on any type of business, such as the financial sector, manufacturing, retail, and others. All the economic losses you might have when your entire production environment is stopped, you’re down for two days when currently companies can’t be down for more than 15 minutes, depending on the type of organization; but today you know that we live on data and being offline affects you, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes. For example:
You don’t feel safe to go to the supermarket and you decide to do it online, you choose your favorite supermarket, but it turns out that it is not online and you decide to buy in another one, that kind of information availability is affected, now imagine that this information is compromised, that the data you entered there you can no longer recover them, as you can imagine, the impacts are really very high.
5 questions your organization should take into account to prepare for and lessen the impact of ransomware
There continues to be exponential growth in the use of ransomware as a criminal business model; specialist surveys revealed that there were almost three times as many ransomware incidents in 2020 than in 2019, resulting in losses of over $120 billion annually.
1. Can you defend against a ransomware attack?
You can start with a threat scouting exercise to assess the various avenues of ransomware compromise and the strength of your defenses. As the interconnected cloud services that organizations hang on every day have become increasingly diverse and complex, their attack surfaces have also grown.
2. Do you have a plan to detect and contain a ransomware attack?
Building your response plan starts with understanding the reality of your network and assets. What does it really look like and where does your organization have blind spots? Your response plan must also address considerations beyond the technical. Ransomware response crosses multiple processes and functions within your organization, such as
- Operations restoration; internal and external communications
- Ransom payment decisions
- Specialized professional services firms
3. Do you have access to the data you need to understand the impact of a ransomware attack?
The key resource for countering ransomware attacks is having access to the right data. The fingerprints of an attack are recorded in data. Organizations need the ability to systematically track their data during a ransomware attack to understand how and how far an attacker penetrated their networks.
4. What processes do you have in place to ensure you are constantly evolving your approach?
Ransomware attacks today are not the same as they were five years ago. While the motivations may remain the same in general, the tactics will continue to evolve. Adversaries have a variety of methods to encrypt and publicly shame victims into paying.
All of these changes will inevitably change the way organizations respond to ransomware threats and attacks, so organizations must be prepared for constant evolution and maintain an up-to-date framework on how to prevent, detect, and respond to ransomware.
5. Are you moving fast enough?
To effectively respond to ransomware, organizations must act quickly to understand the scope of the compromise and contain the incident. Your detection time and response time are key.
The threat of ransomware doesn’t go away. Organizations must ask tough questions about how prepared they are to respond. Recognizing the threat posed by ransomware and developing a data-driven approach to detect and respond to it is the best chance we have of navigating this ever-evolving threat.
Want to learn more about how cybersecurity has been affected in times of pandemics? Keep reading our blogs.