Cybereason Government Inc. Issues Ransomware Holiday Warning
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Cybereason is warning all organizations in the U.S. about a possible surge in cyberattacks over the upcoming 2021 holiday season.
BOSTON, Nov. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Cybereason, the leader in operation-centric attack protection, today issued a Ransomware Advisory, through its government subsidiary, Cybereason Government Inc, warning government agencies and all organizations about a possible surge in ransomware attacks during the holidays and weekends. Cybereason Government Inc briefed more than 20 officials from CISA, the FBI and U.S. Secret Service on its Advisory and its recent global ransomware study.
The genesis of advisory is based on new research published this week. Cybereason published results from a global research study looking at organizations that have previously suffered a successful ransomware attack on a holiday or weekend. A key result highlights the disconnect between organizational risk and preparedness. The report, titled Organizations at Risk: Ransomware Attackers Don't Take Holidays, found that the vast majority of security professionals expressed high concern about imminent ransomware attacks, yet nearly half felt they do not have the right tools in place to manage it.
"Cybereason Government Inc's Holiday Ransomware Advisory was created to increase awareness and offer prescriptive advice and recommendations on how to address the ransomware risk and reduce the likelihood of successful ransomware attacks during the 2021 holiday season," said Sam Curry, President of Cybereason Government Inc and Chief Security Officer, Cybereason.
The report outlines recommendations for how to reduce the risk of a ransomware attack during the holiday season and weekends, including:
-- Practicing good security hygiene like implementing a security awareness
program for employees, assuring operating systems and other software are
regularly updated and patched, and deploying best-in-class security
solutions on the network.
-- Assuring key players can be reached at any time of day as critical
response actions can be delayed during weekend/holiday periods. Having
clear on-call duty assignments for off-hours security incidents is
crucial here.
-- Conducting periodic table-top exercises and drills and including those
beyond the security team like Legal, Human Resources, IT Support and all
the way up to the Executive Suite is also key to running a smooth
incident response.
-- Ensuring clear isolation practices are in place to stop any further
ingress on the network or spreading of the ransomware to other devices.
Teams should be proficient at things like disconnecting a host, locking
down a compromised account, and blocking a malicious domain, etc.
Testing these procedures with scheduled or unscheduled drills at least
every quarter is recommended to make sure all personnel and procedures
work as expected.
-- Evaluating lock-down of critical accounts for the weekend/holiday when
possible. The usual path attackers take in propagating ransomware across
a network is to escalate privileges to the admin domain-level and then
deploy the ransomware. Those highest privilege accounts in many cases
are rarely required to be in use during the weekend or holiday breaks.
Teams should create highly secured, emergency-only accounts in the
active directory that are only used when other operational accounts are
temporarily disabled as a precaution or inaccessible during a ransomware
attack.
-- Deploying EDR on all endpoints. The quickest remedy to the ransomware
scourge for public and private sector businesses is deploying EDR on
endpoints according to Gartner's Peter Firstbrook. Yet Firstbrook says
that only 40 percent of endpoints have EDR.
For Help Evaluating Ransomware Risks, Contact:
CYBEREASON INCIDENT RESPONSE
Web: https://www.cybereason.com/services/incident-response
Phone: 855-695-8200
CISA
Email: central@cisa.gov
Phone: (888) 282-0870
Web: https://us-cert.cisa.gov
FBI
Email: CyWatch@fbi.gov
Phone: (855) 292-3937
Web: https://www.ic3.gov/
About Cybereason
Cybereason is the champion for today's cyber defenders, providing operation-centric attack protection that unifies security from the endpoint, to the enterprise, to everywhere the battle moves. The Cybereason Defense Platform combines the industry's top-rated AI-powered detection and response (EDR and XDR), next-gen antivirus (NGAV), Anti-Ransomware Protection and Proactive Threat Hunting to deliver context-rich analysis of every stage of a MalOp(TM) (malicious operation). Cybereason is a privately held, international company headquartered in Boston with customers in more than 40 countries.
Media Contact:
Bill Keeler
Senior Director, Global Public Relations
Cybereason
bill.keeler@cybereason.com
(929) 259-3261
Media Contact
Bill Keeler, Cybereason, 929 259-3261, bill.keeler@cybereason.com
SOURCE Cybereason
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