As the number of ransomware assaults increases, how can you protect yourself?

 After conducting an online poll of 50 C-suite and other senior executives in June 2012, Deloitte found that 87% of respondents expected the frequency of cyberattacks against their firms to rise in the coming year. In addition, 65% of those polled said that ransomware will be their biggest security worry in the coming year.

The use of ransomware is nothing new or unusual. Why is there such a lack of readiness in light of the hazards and vulnerabilities that have been made known to higher-level executives?

This is for a variety of reasons. The attackers' level of complexity is a significant factor. Many firms aren't prepared for the attacks' quick evolution and their use of third-party software as carriers. As a result, there is a lot of misunderstanding, which hackers may readily exploit.

Apart from that, ransomware assaults tend to focus on apps and data stored in files, two areas of infrastructure that have been largely overlooked. The conventional wisdom holds that safeguarding application access, protecting important attributes in structured stores, and deploying infrastructure using tried-and-true procedures (hardening) leaves attackers with weak points they might use against companies.

Inadequate backup and recovery resiliency is another advantage for ransomware attackers. Strong resilience necessitates financial and human resources. The IT operations department, not the security department, is often in charge of this sector. Budget constraints and a lack of coordination are two common impediments. Also problematic is the absence of an all-encompassing answer.

But it's not all over yet. Recent times have drawn the C-attention Suite's to the danger of suffering from a catastrophic incident that might bring the organisation to a grinding halt or inflict enormous financial damage.

There is probably no other issue of greater importance in terms of security and operational readiness from a security standpoint.

Strategic preparation and tactical readiness are both required to harden the organisation against a ransomware assault and recover from it. Prioritizing readiness, reducing panic, and making investments all require the C-support Suite's and consent. If you're facing an attack, having a strategy in place and practising it is vital. a well-thought-out ransomware attack is capable of debilitating a business

A ransomware attack can be thwarted if a company takes particular security posture actions.

To begin, security teams should prioritise protecting data over everything else. The most important asset of every company is its data. Data-centric security solutions start with securing the data, which means a business may safeguard its most critical assets by focusing on this area first.

Even if a threat vector can get through the network layer since it is a noisy and difficult to discover anomalous space, a network breach will have a hard time gaining ground if data is properly safeguarded. The most vulnerable parts of an organisation can be safeguarded by implementing a network-based next-generation data security system that focuses on the data.

Second, encrypting data is a common method of traditional data protection. When data are in use, existing encryption solutions do not provide any protection because they only protect data while it is at rest or in motion. With today's cutting-edge encryption systems, data can be protected even when being processed or searched since they maintain it secured. If an attacker threatens to leak or make public the organization's sensitive data, the threat is null and void. As a result, any stolen or exfiltrated data will be encrypted and rendered useless to the attacker.

Finally, a company must ensure that it has a suitable backup solution in place to do frequent data and system backups, in addition to a very sophisticated encryption solution that keeps data secured throughout its lifecycle regardless of its location. The organization's options are open even if a ransomware attack encrypts its encrypted data again.

An organisation has successfully removed any leverage that an attacker might have had by having backups easily available and technology in place to ensure that any sensitive data is encrypted. Furthermore, any ransom money laid aside as a last option has been preserved by the group. Finally, with such data-centric security measures in place, insurance rates for cyberattacks will be lower.