Adarma Ransomware Webinar: One Click and You’re Toast Right?

Adarma’s new Ransomware Readiness report (download here) recently found that 58% of UK businesses with more than 2000 employees have suffered a ransomware attack.  A staggering 67% of those victims confirmed they had paid the ransom, with 94% reporting they are either concerned or very concerned about the threat.   

Recently published research from Tenable found that ransomware accounted for 43.4% of all attacks across EMEA in 2021, suggesting that organisations are right to be worried about being targeted by ransomware criminals.  

However despite these figures, a surprising 96% of respondents to Adarma’s survey said they were confident in their ability to respond to a ransomware attack, even though 22% said they had no ransomware incident response plan in place.  

Given the rising number of attacks and this confusing combination of over-confidence paired with lack of preparedness, Adarma decided to host, in partnership with Tenable, a webinar focused on debunking common misconceptions about ransomware.  

Our speakers David Calder, chief product officer at Adarma and Bernard Montel technical director EMEA / security strategist at Tenable shared their insights and advice on how ransomware operates and how to respond to an ongoing attack in order to limit the its harm to the organisation.  

Here are 5 key points that David and Bernard recommend you consider when preparing for a ransomware attack.  

1 – Phishing emails are not the only vector that a ransomware attacker might use to gain the initial foothold. Other access methods include unpatched software, misconfigured systems or using credentials that have been acquired in other ways. 

2 – If a ransomware attack has started then cutting the pathways the perpetrators are using is one way to mitigate propagation, but it’s vital that when you detect an attack you don’t reveal to the attackers they’ve been detected. The more you hide, the better you can react accordingly otherwise they might launch another attack.  

3 – View cloud as an opportunity to introduce chokepoints that can be protected and consider where network segregation can be deployed.  

4 – Plan how you will collaborate and communicate as a team if your systems and devices have been compromised by an attacker. You do not want to reveal your response to your attackers.  

5 – Don’t ignore the human element of your response plan. People will be pulling exceptionally long shifts and face an enormous amount of pressure. Leaders need a to know in advance how they will support their team and ensure they don’t burn out.  

To learn more about ransomware why not check out our video Ransomware first responders – What it’s really like on the ground or our article Ransomware: Your Checklist for Building an Incident Response Plan.  

To find out more about Adarma and how we can help prepare and protect your organisation against ransomware attacks, please Contact us.

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