Every organization deserves great security.
Ransomware can have a detrimental impact on every organization, especially on small and medium-sized businesses. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the estimated impact of ransomware in 2019 was $11.5 Billion and one of every five businesses would be impacted by it. Would your company be able to take on this risk and recover from ransomware?
Indeed, having an in-depth understanding of ransomware and doing this ransomware readiness assessment are the first steps to keep away from the vulnerabilities caused by it. It is crucial to keep in mind that the methods cyber criminals use to haunt your business are constantly changing and evolving. Your responsibility is to protect your business’ reputation and credibility, your clients’ data, and to avoid experiencing downtime in your business.
To help you get started with building a strong defense for your company from ransomware, consider the following tips and recommendations:
Prevention – An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Anti-malware: Next-generation anti-malware software does not only help keep your devices free from ransomware. They also look out for key loggers and other threats to your security. Next-gen anti-malware takes traditional antivirus software to an advanced level of security protection.
You should run anti-malware not only on work devices, but also personal laptop and desktop computers to help reduce the rest of your home network in case they get infected.
Awareness Training and email filtering: Train your team to become conscious and vigilant about potential threats – not limited to the generic phishing attacks, but also the targeted, research driven and social engineering attacks. Kobalt.io can support you with your team’s security awareness training by providing bite-sized and easy to follow online modules: https://www.kobalt.io/security-awareness-training
RBAC and segmentation: Role-based access control (RBAC) is a method to restrict network access based on roles of individual users within an organization. With this access-control and segmentation in place, users can have access to information they need for their work without accessing information that they do not pertain to. It can also prevent an infected user from taking out all the important files and information out of the system.
Detection – Early detection saves businesses.
Set up systems or collaborate with Kobalt.io to keep your system monitored. You will be informed immediately when the system has detected early warning signs and will be able to react to it before it turns into a serious cyber incident. Quick detection, followed by quick and decisive response, are key.
Response – How to get your data and business out of
the fire, safely?
Backup and Incident response plan: You might consider local backup. However, compared to cloud recovery, local backup is not good enough. Devote time to estimate and strategize your backup plan – How fast are you able to get operation again? Do you have an incident response plan? Do you test your backups? Do you have a flat network? These are all key questions to ask your team in order to strengthen your security program.
Insurance and payouts: Expect the worst attack that could happen. What are the pros and cons of the insurance and what does your insurance plan cover? Dealing with payouts – cryptocurrency? Whose budget does paying ransomware come out of?
Investing the time to plan out your company’s backup strategy and cybersecurity program will be worth it. Be proactive and act on it now. Kobalt.io is always happy to support you and your cyber security system in various ways, for example: Security gap assessment and recommendations, incident response plans and retainers, tabletop exercises, security monitoring, and security program-as-a-service.
ABOUT KOBALT.IO
Kobalt.io assesses, develops and runs cyber security programs for small and mid-sized organizations. We provide security operations and advisory services to your organization – to empower your ability to embrace cloud infrastructure; protect data stored in critical SaaS applications and your corporate environments, and ensure confidence in your security visibility.
