The 2024 State of Ransomware report highlights the growing threat of ransomware attacks:
- 59% of enterprises were hit with ransomware in 2023
- Ransoms have increased by 5x in the previous year
- 32% of attacks occur due to an unpatched vulnerability
The U.S. healthcare sector has seen the highest impact of ransomware attacks in recent years. Over the last five years, there’s been a 256% increase in security breaches and a 264% increase in ransomware.
Organizations need a proactive mindset to prevent ransomware attacks much before they are launched. While preventing ransomware is next to impossible, companies can minimize the damaging impact of these attacks.
One such proactive method is a ransomware assessment, which allows organizations to review their security control, evaluate their detection and response measures, and finally emulate a real attack. Additionally, a ransomware assessment can help companies detect any security flaws in their system that hackers can exploit.
Let’s understand why ransomware assessment is valuable in the modern cybersecurity environment.
What is a ransomware assessment?
The U.S.-based cyber-defense agency CISA defines ransomware assessment as any “organization’s ability to counteract a ransomware infection and its spread, but also to resume operations in case of an infection.”
In other words, a ransomware assessment is a company’s proactive approach to cybersecurity that evaluates its preparation for a ransomware attack. Through this assessment, organizations can preempt their defense readiness against ransomware.
Security teams can identify areas of potential vulnerabilities and exposure that hackers can exploit. Additionally, it generates an assessment report detailing specific actions to strengthen its ransomware defense.
Here are some of the benefits of a ransomware assessment:
- Evaluates the organization’s contextual preparedness for preventing ransomware attacks.
- Identifies areas of vulnerability in the organization’s cybersecurity infrastructure.
- Determines if the organization has invested its security budget in the correct business processes and procedures.
- Identifies areas of improvement in cybersecurity policies and best practices.
- Checks if the organization’s ransomware readiness is aligned with its cybersecurity goals and strategies.
- Provides actionable recommendations for organizations to improve their ransomware detection and response mechanism.
- Enables organizations to build a robust and resilient IT infrastructure that can withstand a variety of cyberattacks.
- Improves employees’ awareness and training in identifying phishing attacks and suspicious links.
Key components of ransomware assessment
Depending on the enterprise’s security requirements, a ransomware assessment involves evaluating their technical and operational controls. Typically, this assessment evaluates the following 3 key areas:
- Operational Capabilities
- Communication and collaboration
- Incident response
- Data recovery
- Adversary Detection
- Technical Architecture
The operational capability of any enterprise involves evaluating how quickly its security teams can respond to a ransomware incident. This includes gauging their skills in:
Adversary detection involves simulating a real-life ransomware attack and monitoring the organization’s ability to stop the threat in progress. This assessment determines the security-related technology stack and skills and exposes any weaknesses that hackers can exploit.
As ransomware attacks target the organization’s active directory, the technical architecture evaluation checks the security settings in this directory. Additionally, this evaluation tries to detect vulnerabilities that hackers can use to gain unauthorized entry to their network. This assessment highlights specific weak areas in the enterprise’s security system architecture.
Additionally, a ransomware assessment includes various processes to evaluate the organization’s readiness against ransomware. This includes:
- Identifying and securing critical assets to be monitored continuously.
- Executing security risk assessment to detect vulnerabilities and the possible impact of a ransomware attack.
- Testing security mechanisms like firewalls and intrusion detection and/or intrusion prevention systems (IDS and/or IPS) in detecting and preventing ransomware.
- Evaluating the enterprise’s cybersecurity policies and response plans against security incidents – along with the effectiveness of the existing security framework.
- Evaluating employees’ awareness about ransomware and determining if they need additional training to respond to such threats.
- Monitoring IT systems and networks continuously for early threat detection and response.
How Onix delivers a proactive approach to ransomware risk management
With its cloud security consulting services expertise, Onix brings decades of experience in end-to-end security and compliance. Our security-first approach can help you identify and mitigate various cyber threats, including ransomware.
Here’s how Onix can help in improving your security posture:
- Proactive risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities that can expose your systems to external threats.
- A robust security infrastructure to protect your sensitive data and organizational assets.
- Industry-tested zero trust architecture to prevent unauthorized access to your critical systems and devices.
- AI-powered threat intelligence to mitigate incoming threats in real time.
We’re ready to secure your IT infrastructure from ransomware. Contact our security experts today.
Reference links:
https://www.sophos.com/en-us/content/state-of-ransomware
https://cybernews.com/security/ransomware-attack-costs-rising-sharply-in-2024
https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2024/08/state-of-ransomware-now
https://pentera.io/glossary/ransomware-readiness-assessment/
https://www.redscan.com/services/ransomware-preparedness-assessment
https://www.schellman.com/services/cybersecurity-assessments/ransomware-assessments
https://xmcyber.com/glossary/ransomware-readiness-assessment/
