The most prevalent cyber threat now plaguing enterprises - ransomware, costs firms millions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The pandemic has only exacerbated the prevalence of ransomware attacks, with the frequency of this kind of cyberattack rising by 600% over the previous two years. This cybercrime, which is one of the main reasons for financial bankruptcy in startup businesses, might be terrible for your company because it often shuts down businesses for three weeks.
Even while ransomware has the potential to seriously harm your brand and image, it is not unbeatable. In actuality, it is only as strong as the weakest connection in your business. The good news is that there are obvious actions your company can make to avoid being a target of cybercrime and reduce the possibility that an attack might bring your operation to a halt. This article will discuss:
Minimizing privilege
Utilizing cloud security protection
Data backups
Training your team
Routine testing and validation
Putting the 3-2-1-1 Backup Rule into practice
Minimizing privilege
Making sure that your user accounts only have a restricted range of data access, based on who they are, is another more modest technique to safeguard your company against ransomware. You risk unintentionally giving a basic user access to all corporate data in unconfigured data systems. If a hacker discovered that account, they would also have unlimited access, which might result in a complete takeover. You can make sure that even if a hacker obtains access, their reach is more constrained if you restrict the scope of every account and limit their access to only the places they require to perform their duties. By doing this, you'll be able to minimize security breaches by limiting the extent of a hacker's compromised account.
Utilizing cloud security protection
Ransomware protection is a crucial component of cloud security, and these cloud providers provide your company with a thorough degree of assistance. One of the best choices you can make to safeguard your company's security is to use the scalable and easily available cloud security protection. Ransomware mitigation duties like double-checking for spam in every email your company gets are carried out by ransomware protection. An email will be banned or put in a moderation queue if it is identified as most likely having ransomware or phishing components so that one of your cybersecurity specialists can evaluate the danger. With this in place, your first-layer defenses will be far more thorough, with your ransomware security platform or software handling the great majority of any emails or other threats that may be directed at you. Additionally, because this is completely autonomous, it will relieve a lot of your responsibility for maintaining cyber defenses.
Data Backups
Data backups create a duplicate copy of all of your company's data that may be used as a fallback. They can be whole or partial copies. Although you may generate these backups as often as you wish, your business should allow for as many backups as possible. The amount of business progress that you're willing to completely wipe away depends on how long it takes between backups, which may seem excessive or onerous to you. Your backup will be your sole option if a ransomware attack results in a data breach and causes them to wipe out your entire system.
You haven't lost much ground if that backup is from a few days ago, so you may carry on as usual. If you just back up once per quarter or once a year, it might be terrible for your company and lead to your downfall.
Always have backups available if you want to limit the harm ransomware might wreak to your business. In this way, if your systems do get the infection and you don't compensate the hacker, all of your data will be lost, and you can easily restore it from the backup. You have more control over ransomware scenarios the more backups you have and the more often you create them. Just make sure to keep backups spread out; it's even better if at least one of them is entirely offline and kept on a local storage device. Continue as normal after uploading a data backup!
Training your team
Starting with educating your firm is always a fantastic place to start, especially given that the vast majority of ransomware attacks are brought on by an employee clicking on a phishing link or exposing personal information to a scam email. Hosting an online seminar to teach your workers how to recognize phishing emails and how to avoid them should always be a priority. Everyone at your firm will be far better prepared when a crisis event really occurs if you give them a basic outline of how a hacker will attempt to enter your systems.
One of the fundamental mitigation strategies that will assist to reduce the likelihood that your teams may fall victim to a ransomware scam or phishing email is education. Start with your staff before using other strategies to provide a high degree of ransomware security. This will provide you with an immediate degree of security that won't set you back any money.
Routine testing and validation
Your work is not done until you've developed a thorough data protection plan. Testing guarantees that your strategy will function as intended. Additionally, because IT environments are always changing, continual testing is essential even while initial testing can validate that all parts of the strategy really function.
Notably, there is no assurance that you can recover swiftly if you don't test your strategy. A plan is only as good as the last time it was tested! Implementing solutions that test in a sandbox or non-disruptive, isolated recovery environment is also crucial.
Putting the 3-2-1-1 Backup Rule into practice
You will always have a current location to resume operations when ransomware does strike if you regularly back up your data, system images, and configurations. Even better, use the 3-2-1 backup rule to distribute your data across many locations in order to avoid a single point of failure.Maintaining three or more copies in various places, using two separate storage mediums, and keeping one copy off-site are all required. As a result, there will be less possibility of an attacker getting complete access. This 3-2-1 rule also gives choices in the event that an attack completely destroys a data center and prevents one of those vulnerabilities from compromising all of your copies. By storing at least one copy on immutable (cannot be modified) and indelible (cannot be destroyed) storage, many businesses are now taking one more step to 3-2-1-1.
Final Reflections
It takes more than one practice to start building a robust ransomware defense for your company. Instead, you should aim to use all of these strategies at once since done so, they will give you the best chance at complete security. You can keep on top of the constantly changing world of cybersecurity if you pay attention to experts and follow their most recent advice. You can completely defend your business against ransomware by integrating backups, company education, and cloud security into your regular operations.
If you want even more information on protecting your personal data or protecting your business from threats, we’ve got you covered. We offer a free call that reviews the best cybersecurity practices.