8 Tips To Prevent ransomware

Security  for cyber workspace is a big topic in post-pandemic era. Through phishing emails or other virus attack, corporates are at the risk of ransomware. As the modernization of work: the new and constant remote and hybrid workforce, many business have taken a rapid “ready or not” approach into the adoption of cloud technologies, which offer the chances for ransomware attackers.

The most significant cybersecurity threat today is ransomware. In the corporate level, significant breached may be career-ending for company executives, also potential reputational and financial damage to the organizations that fall victim.

“Ransomware is a type of malicious software, or malware, that prevents you from accessing your computer files, systems, or networks and demands you pay a ransom for their return. Ransomware attacks can cause costly disruptions to operations and the loss of critical information and data.” (Ransomware — FBI)

To prevent damage and lost from ransomware, here are 8 tips for you to check whether your corporate is security-ready to prevent ransomware.

1. Make sure you are running the most updated security and anti-virus software for your emails

Email phishing and spam are the main way that ransomware attacks are distributed. The sufficient security for your mails just like security guard standing in front of your entrance. Blocking malicious attachments and suspicious URLs could prevent 80% of ransomware attacks..

2. Implement anti-phishing campaigns and block malicious websites

Secure web gateways can scan your users’ web surfing traffic to identify malicious web ads that might lead them to ransomware. It is worth to monitor websites and web application for potential hack. Please remember, the costliest breaches are the result of simple failures, not attacker ingenuity.

3. Implement monitoring tools across your systems

Monitoring tools can detect unusual file access activities, viruses, network traffic, etc., which may block ransomware from activating.

4. Implement identity management and least privileged access

Make sure your corporate has implemented policies for strong passwords or multi-factor authentication. There steps are the essential but important to prevent abnormal account access. Limited user access to what is necessary for employees could also increase the level of preventing ransomware. Let employees to use privileged access at a certain time or project-based from permissions, should be tied to the length of the project only.

5. Educate your employees to do the right things

Mistake occurred basically because of lack of knowledge. Ransomware is a big trouble to the corporate, but it is preventable. Educate your employees to open emails wisely is the step-one of security. Never open malicious emails and click suspicious URLs is the basic knowledge of technological security. Education is the less cost but most effective way to prevent ransomware.

6. Make things easier

Lack of security education or experience let people naturally make poor security decisions with technology. Make your system easy-to-use is always correct. Create policies, rules and IT controls that help your employees and end users to do their jobs effectively. Be sure to teach them the systems and controls that you want them to use. Don’t set up policies that are restrictive, otherwise your employees will use private cloud, which is the chance for ransomware attackers.

7. Establish a plan for business continuity

Prepare a Business Impact Assessment on your systems to determine not only criticality of systems, but also recover time and recovery point objectives. Keeping a full image of crucial systems can reduce the risk of a crashed.

8. Back-up your data early and often

No ransomware attacks will notice you before attack. However, once your corporate unfortunately being attacked, you would also need to keep the business running. Therefore, no matter which levels of cloud service applied in your corporate, you need backup your data time-to-time. If you have not backup your data yet, stop thinking and backup your data now.

Ref: Ransomware Readiness Checklist | AvePoint