How to Protect Your Business Against Ransomware
How to Protect Your Business Against Ransomware – As ransomware evolves, it targets small, medium, and large businesses. They are a major issue for both businesses and individuals. Every day, we see examples of these attacks in the news and on the front pages.
2024-01-19
Clicking on a bogus link or downloading an attachment could be enough to install Ransomware on your PC, encrypting all of your data. So, do you know how to defend yourself against ransomware? Some measures you can take to protect yourself from ransomware attacks.
1- Keep Your Antivirus Software up-to-date
This is an important component of how to protect against ransomware. However, it is sometimes overlooked by SMEs. Many anti-virus programs can now identify ransomware. There are also programs, such as Phishing Reporter, that allow end-users to report questionable emails for investigation. These kinds of technologies can aid in the prevention of ransomware.
2- Intrusion Detection Technologies and Monitor Them
Intrusion detection systems or technologies analyze network traffic for suspicious activity and defined risks, raising warnings when such activity is detected. These technologies assist organizations in detecting the types of traffic irregularities that may indicate that the organization has been compromised. Also, keep an eye on these technologies to see if they are preventing ransomware. Use email security gap analysis tools to determine whether your email protection or email security technology is effective.
3- Use Email Filtering and Content Scanning Tools
Email filtering and content scanning technologies aid in the prevention of unwanted or potentially dangerous code or links that route users to malicious websites. These technologies contain both inbound email filtering and outbound email traffic monitoring, and the emails are classified into distinct classes to identify them as safe. These tools are the simplest approach to prevent employees from clicking on a ransomware link in an email. It prevents ransomware from reaching users’ inboxes.
4- Use Automated Incident Response Tools
Another answer to how to protect against ransomware is to have an incident response tool that protects businesses at the inbox level. These systems monitor, analyze, scan, and quarantine suspicious emails in inboxes. These tools can function and connect with other analysis engines, allowing an institution to obtain technology that it does not currently have.
5- Have a Recovery Plan
A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a well-organized and written approach that details how an organization can immediately resume operations after an occurrence. This plan is intended to assist an organization in preventing data loss and restoring system operation in the aftermath of an incident. However, having a documented plan is not enough; organizations must test their strategy to see if it is functioning or not.
6- Have an Efficient Backup Procedure
A data backup procedure is a method of storing copies of your computer’s files. Keeping a backup of your critical files and data is critical for a variety of reasons.
Backup should be at least three copies of your data so that no single incident will ruin all copies. Store the data in at least two different levels like on a disk and a cloud. Moreover, store one copy of your data off-site to preserve it against natural disasters like fire, flood, theft, and other physical disasters.
7- Do not pay the ransom.
Security experts and law enforcement officials have emphasized how paying the ransom does not pay back, but rather funds the cybercrime and encourages criminals to continue assaulting their targets with ransomware. Rather than paying the crooks, you can use your backups to restore your system or data.
Organizations that paid a ransom after a ransomware attack. Source: Sophos
8- Prepare Your Employees for Ransomware Attacks with Security Awareness Training
Regular cyber security awareness training is a necessary step to stop ransomware attacks. Before a ransomware attack infects your system, which generally occurs through social engineering techniques , you must provide comprehensive cyber security awareness training to your users in order to raise their understanding of the difference between valid and fake emails.
9- Use Simulated Phishing Attacks
Another answer to how to protect against ransomware will be training your employees through simulated phishing attacks.
How Effective Are Phishing Simulations Against Cyberattacks?
Using Phishing simulator tools , you may assess and confirm your employees’ susceptibility to Ransomware threats.
10- What Should You Do in the Event of a Ransomware Attack?
If you use cloud backup software in the event of a Ransomware attack, you can recover your files fast without paying any ransom. Check that your files are protected by cloud backup software. Cloud software provides the strongest protection against ransomware.
If you are a cloud backup user and are attacked by ransomware, you need to take 4 simple steps to retrieve files:
If you notice your computer, file server, or network is infected with ransomware, close all file-sharing activity immediately.
Examine the virus and the degree of its damage. If necessary, use your computer’s antivirus software to locate your encrypted digital files. Clean all infected files. Recover clean versions of infected files by logging into the cloud backup system.
The best Action for Ransomware Attacks is Cyber Security Awareness Training
Organizations may prepare against Ransomware attacks with the help of Keepnet’s simulated phishing tests and cyber security awareness training. Try our phishing tests and security awareness training for free.
Thanks to Keepnet, employees who were unaware of the recent cyberattacks can now be more diligent about following the correct cyber security procedures. By assigning employees to different awareness programs based on their performance in phishing simulations, Keepnet provides a way to enhance cyber skills.