Ransomware Blog Series Offers Protection Advice

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

As ransomware becomes a more serious threat, businesses need to take new precautions.

Ransomware attacks are becoming commonplace, disrupting business operations and costing thousands of dollars in down time and other losses. Cybercrime hit record heights in 2015, and Trend Micro predicts ransomware will grow exponentially in 2016.

According to Webroot’s 2016 Threat Brief, “The continued onslaught of hacks, breaches, and social engineering scams targeting individuals, businesses, and government agencies alike has caused many in the security field to ask if it’s truly possible to defend against a persistent attacker.” Whether you’re an SMB, MSP, MSSP, or large Enterprise, the best defense is a better understanding of the risk and having appropriate, relevant, and effective measures in place to stop extortionists holding your company to ransom.

To help protect enterprises from being taken hostage, Trend Micro has released a four-part blog post series that helps “say no to ransomware” and outlines a layered protection model for businesses of any industry to implement. The series includes:

1. Email and Web Gateway: Your First Line of Defense Against Ransomware. This post explains how businesses can prevent ransomware from reaching users via phishing emails or malicious websites by defending entry points. Since IT managers cannot just assume that paying the ransom or using tools to unlock certain strains of ransomware will be effective, “the key is to block the malware before it even reaches the organization — through layered security.”
2. Lock Down the Endpoint as Part of Your Layered Defense Against Ransomware: The second post advises monitoring for suspicious behavior, enforcing application whitelists and updating vulnerabilities to stop ransomware.
3. Network Defense: Why Visibility is Key to Rooting Out Ransomware. In the third installment, Trend Micro asserts that enterprises need to implement network security with advanced detection capabilities across all traffic, ports and protocols for ransomware prevention.
4. Time to Shield Your Servers Against a New Breed of Ransomware. The final installment discusses how businesses should ensure protection via virtual patching, as well as screen for ransomware lateral movement and file integrity.

As the number and frequency of ransomware attacks rise, wreaking havoc on the systems they target, SMBs, MSPs or MSSPs, and large Enterprise MSPs alike will need to take a new approach to fending off these predators. You can protect your business clients from ransomware by understanding the threat and by having the right technologies, policies, people, and processes in place to counter this insidious attack.