7 Best Practices to Prevent and Mitigate Ransomware Attacks
Incidents of ransomware are on the rise and overtaking other types of malware to become one of the most serious threats to an organization’s reputation, financial stability, and proprietary data.
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Incidents of ransomware are on the rise and overtaking other types of malware to become one of the most serious threats to an organization’s reputation, financial stability, and proprietary data. Here are 7 best practices to prevent and mitigate the impact of ransomware.
It is important that employees are aware of ransomware and their role in preventing it. Employees should be trained not to open links or attachments in emails from senders they don’t know, and what to do if they believe they may have fallen victim to a ransomware attack, according to a report by FierceHealthIT.
A centralized patch management system can help secure machines across an organization and address vulnerabilities as soon as a patch becomes available. “Organizations must move beyond simple compliance to proactively working to prevent vulnerabilities from being exploited,” Ken Levine of Xconomy said.
When assigning privileges to users, it is important that users are only assigned administrative access when absolutely necessary. Thycotic suggests that organizations apply the principle of “Least Privilege” to all systems and services.
Macros are special codes that get replaced with information specific to each recipient, i.e. the {Contact_First_Name} macro will be replaced with each recipient’s first name.
“If a user opens the attachment and enables macros, embedded code will execute the malware on the machine,” Thycotic said. “For enterprises or organizations, it may be best to block email messages with attachments from suspicious sources.”
Application whitelisting prevents unapproved programs from running. Thycotic calls this method one of the best security strategies in preventing malicious software.
Data backup can help organizations protect valuable information. Regular backups can help limit the impact of data loss and expedite the recovery process.
Paying a ransom does not guarantee that your data will be returned intact. The FBI specifically cautions against paying a ransom for this and other reasons, including the fact that paying a ransom could encourage other cybercriminals to target more organizations.
Paying a ransom does not guarantee that your data will be returned intact. The FBI specifically cautions against paying a ransom for this and other reasons, including the fact that paying a ransom could encourage other cybercriminals to target more organizations.
Incidents of ransomware are on the rise and overtaking other types of malware to become one of the most serious threats to an organization’s reputation, financial stability, and proprietary data.
According to a new report from anti-malware firm Enigma Software, ransomware incidents grew by 159 percent since March, accounting for the largest percentage of overall malware infections in April.
The problem has become so bad that the FBI recently warned the public about ransomware.
“These criminals have evolved over time and now bypass the need for an individual to click on a link. They do this by seeding legitimate websites with malicious code, taking advantage of unpatched software on end-user computers,” FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James Trainor said in a statement.
“The FBI doesn’t support paying a ransom in response to a ransomware attack. Paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee an organization that it will get its data back—we’ve seen cases where organizations never got a decryption key after having paid the ransom,” Trainor said. “Paying a ransom not only emboldens current cyber criminals to target more organizations, it also offers an incentive for other criminals to get involved in this type of illegal activity. And finally, by paying a ransom, an organization might inadvertently be funding other illicit activity associated with criminals.”
Here are 7 best practices to prevent and mitigate the impact of ransomware.
SEE ALSO: IT Channel Partner Saves Dental Practice from Ransomware Attack
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