Ransomeware is a concept that’s been making its ways through the news more often, and it shouldn’t be surprising that this will happen even more in the future.
Ransomware has been a popular method of attack since the pandemic. But also attackers are exploiting the fact that victims neglect certain things or lack expertise.
For the past few years, there has been one counter to ransomware attacks: using the cloud. There are fewer attacks done on the cloud because they’re well maintained and updated regularly too. This is on top of the higher level of security and on-premises counterparts.
But while the cloud is a great counter, security experts know that there is no such thing as 100% secure. As consumers, we shouldn’t wait for cloud security to be perfect and fix all of its issues. Instead, we’re better off looking for best practices to prevent ransomware and other attacks.
This is where a 3 step method comes in that allows us to deal with any ransomware attack: find, respond, and recover.
Step 1: Find
The only way to know if there is a weakness or a problem is to be finding it. Security monitoring platforms are amazing in this regard as they can do all that along with detecting attempts and monitor everything in cloud-based systems and phishing schemes.
You’ll want to be proactive in finding problems. Using security monitoring platform’s native security systems is a way to be actively monitoring everything. Once you do find a threat, the second step is to respond.
Step 2: Respond
Responses should be automated. If you’ve already sent out texts or emails to security staff, then it’s too late. When you’ve got automated systems in place, they’ll be locking out suspect IP addresses and kill processes that have unusual behaviour.
You can put in place other procedures like forcing password changes to accounts which prevent cloud account takeover based on monitored activity. You can even initiate backups in the vent an attack is successful, making the recovery process quick and easy.
Of course, there is a human aspect to it too. Activating a well-trained response team to follow a process put in place. These plans should have interacting with others through cloud-based systems – customers and suppliers especially.
Step 3: Recover
Ransomware is devastating because you’re not able to recover documents taken back to their original state. This is why most people pay the ransom.
This can all be avoided by simply having a way to recover any and all files that are important to you. Only in small instances is a company fine with losing an hour’s worth of data. But in other cases it can be devastating.
You want to have an active approach where there is no data loss and end users don’t even notice that the switch to backed-up data ever occurred. Those are made possible when you automate the backup and recovery process.
Three Simple Steps
As simple as these steps are, explaining them is easier while applying these steps will be more complex. Even so, consumers who are more wary of security should take measures to ensure these steps.
As more companies are moving towards the cloud for higher protection, it’s only a matter of time when hackers will start breaking into cloud-based networks. If you set up security systems and take extra security measures now, you’ll save yourself time and money.