Imagine you’re an IT administrator and have just started your workday, getting ready to check the status of your organization’s critical applications. But as you turn on your laptop, you see a chilling message: “Your files have been encrypted. To recover access, you must pay a ransom of $ 2 million in bitcoin.” The attack compromised all your organization’s important documents, customer data and product information. To make it even worse, you have 72 hours to comply. Otherwise, you will lose the data permanently.
Ransomware attacks can lead to financial losses and operational downtime. Most importantly, with rapid digital transformation, businesses are vulnerable to more sophisticated ransomware attacks. IDC says that “the rise in ransomware payments, fueled by the exploitation of vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and supply chains, resulted in 59.6% of Asia/Pacific enterprises falling victim to ransomware attacks in 2023.”
Maintain an incident response and recovery plan.
No matter how hard you work, some incidents are unavoidable. Focus on incident response and have a recovery plan that’s actively tested and practiced. Regularly run simulations to minimize the impact of attacks and ensure smooth operations afterwards. Conduct penetration tests and manage vulnerabilities to stay updated.
Who will you call when a breach happens? Identify your recovery team and ensure they are ready, which includes a law firm and a cyber insurance company on call. You must outline the necessary steps to work with law enforcement and consider cyber insurance as part of your resilience strategy.
Manage your communications.
Communicating effectively is key to a crisis scenario, and it’s not different in a ransomware situation. It is imperative to create communication guides as part of your Incident Response Readiness (IRR) plan. These playbooks should include a work-back plan with timely and clear communications for inside the organization, but also consider what messages might be needed for external stakeholders. Ransomware attacks may require a media statement, and it is essential to establish what to do in such cases. Working with your communications and legal teams and adhering to regulations such as notifying authorities, customers, and partners is critical.
Ensure robust data protection.
Data protection is your strongest defense to prevent a bad situation from spiralling. Keep critical data in an isolated, immutable vault for prioritized recovery. Secure methods like a “clean room” help rebuild systems without compromised resources, ensuring complete and accurate recovery.
Paying the ransom should be your last resort as there are no assurances that the hacker will return the data. Regardless, you may not regain access to your systems immediately. You still need to get your applications and infrastructure back to operational – essentially rebuild and test everything again.
Train and educate employees.
Another critical part of your ransomware strategy must include training and educating employees regularly. The root cause of many breaches comes down to employee-level breakdowns. Attackers can compromise an employee’s credentials to gain access to the corporate network, or someone can fall victim to a phishing scam, which opens the corporate doors to an attacker. Educating employees about phishing tactics and password management is a first line of defense.
Readiness pays off.
While facing ransomware can be stressful, having a strategy in place can lessen the impact of financial losses, operational disruption, data loss and reputational damage. You can survive by maintaining an incident response and recovery plan that engages your full team in minimizing the impact of the attack. Ensure you have a robust data protection strategy in place and continuously train and communicate with your employees to safeguard your organization’s valuable information. By taking proactive steps, you reap the benefits of advance planning and preserving your most critical assets.
