Ransomware is a growing threat worldwide and shows no signs of stalling down. In Canada, ransomware is the most common cyber threat.
Any business with a digital platform — regardless of public profile or size — is a potential victim of a ransomware attack. Ransomware encrypts, steals, or deletes business while extorting funds from the victimized company.
While taking cybersecurity measures lowers attack risks, some ransomware attacks will inevitably be successful.
The attack isn’t just disruptive; it puts companies’ and customers’ data at risk. When not addressed at the right time, a ransomware attack damages the brand’s name.
When you’re under a ransomware attack, it isn’t enough to restore your business operations but also take steps to protect your customers and business data from the threat of future successful attacks.
Your business will benefit from professional ransomware recovery services that:
Going for excellent ransomware removal services will help you, regardless of how the situation turns out. Here’s a step-by-step procedure on how cybersecurity experts run the ransomware recovery process.
The first step to recover from ransomware is to conduct a rapid assessment of the scope of infection. The assessment is critical in addressing the internal and external concerns of clients, leaders, and consumers.
More importantly, it’s nearly impossible to draft a response without establishing the extent of infection.
Identify the infected system. When several computers or subnets are infected, switch your network to offline. If it’s impossible to switch offline, find the Ethernet cable and unplug the infected devices from the network.
If the device is on a wireless connection, move it from Wi-Fi to contain the infection.
Removing the infected system from your network is critical because it prevents the attacker from monitoring your business communication to check if you’ve identified their actions.
Isolate the infected systems carefully and use out-of-band communication means like a phone call to avoid tipping off actors that you’ve discovered them and that you’re taking mitigation action.
Tipping off hackers that you’re mitigating the issue causes them to make moves that preserve their access to your system or deploy ransomware to your entire network before you can take it offline.
After an attack, you’ll need a cybersecurity expert first to verify that the attackers didn’t infect your backup with malware.
When your backed-up data is secure, and the expert verifies the copy of your company’s data, you won’t need to worry about paying ransom to bounce back to your normal operation. Instead, you can restore your system to the latest version of your backup after sealing the vulnerability that leads to the attack.
You should only power down the infected device when you can’t disconnect it from the network. Powering down prevents you from retaining ransomware infection evidence stored in volatile memory and infection artifacts.
Experts execute it when it’s impossible to temporarily shut down the network or disconnect the affected device from the network using other means. Otherwise, the expert skips it.
Identify and prioritize critical systems for restoration.
You should prioritize restoration and recovery depending on the pre-defined critical asset list that includes:
Track devices and systems that you perceive aren’t infected, so that you can set them aside for recovery and restoration. Prioritization allows victim businesses to get back to business more efficiently.
Talk to your incident response team to document an initial understanding of what has occurred, depending on the initial analysis. More importantly, involve your legal team to get in touch with forensic experts who can help determine how the incident took place.
Inform all stakeholders and users about the attack and make them understand what they can do to help mitigate, respond and recover from the incident. Ensure the senior leader in your organization gets regular updates as the situation develops.
The relevant stakeholders might include:
You shouldn’t wait for months to inform stakeholders of the attack because of the fear of backlash. Hiding the truth is a sign of irresponsibility that will have long-term damage to your brand’s reputation.
It’s easy to get tempted to pay a ransom, especially when your business depends on uptime, such as the health care industry, emergency services, and law enforcement, because they have a mandate to be available and responsive.
There are plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t pay for ransomware. However, the main reason is that it usually doesn’t work — 92% of businesses that pay ransom don’t recover their systems.
You should focus more on data backup and recovery. The beginning of the recovery phase from backup is to identify the root cause of the attack. Then patch the vulnerabilities. In case of vulnerabilities that can’t be patched, our specialist will segregate the vulnerability and place controls to ensure we minimize your business’ exposure to risks.
Your business can leverage the experience of ransomware experts who have dealt with thousands of such cases before. Compunet understands that you should move quickly to reduce damage, prevent further spreading, and contain the infection when you’re under a ransomware attack. We’ll deploy a team almost immediately to mitigate ransomware attacks. Contact us today for ransomware remediation and prevention services.
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