Within the span of two weeks, cybercriminals were paid a total of $1.1 million in bitcoin via two small town municipalities in Florida. The attacks locked employees out of crucial files, disabled email accounts, rendered emergency response systems useless, water pump stations were turned off and members of the public were unable to make municipal payments online. The two municipalities eventually succumbed to the extortion demands of the hackers paying out $600,000 in the first town and $500,000 in the second.
Ransomware is rapidly gaining popularity in the digital underworld. Hackers can extort small sums of money from vast numbers of individuals or large sums from mid-size or enterprise-size organizations, all while staying under the radar of law enforcement. The overarching goal of these attacks especially for organizations, is to cripple business continuity to the extent where the potential losses from not conducting daily operations is much larger than paying the cost of the ransom.
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the global damage costs in connection with ransomware will reach 11.5 billion annually in 2019. Additionally, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that there will be an attempted ransomware attack every 14 seconds by the end of 2019. We are swiftly entering an era where there might only be two categories of computer users – those who have been attacked and those who will be attacked.
So how can organizations harden their defenses in preparation for the potentiality of an extortion attempt? With Bermuda Microsystems Group managed security services and Dell EMC Data Domain. BMG has over two decades of securing data for customers. As a Dell EMC platinum partner, we proudly offer solutions that meet the most rigorous demands and use the most persistent and secure technologies.
The number one line of defense against ransomware attacks, is an offline, tested disaster recovery process. BMG as mentioned in a previous blog entry, offers managed security services. We can offer you cost savings regarding maintaining in-house cybersecurity personnel and serenity in the fact that your disaster recovery process is handled by professionals with decades of experience. We will ensure that you maintain a verified master copy of your data securely stored and available at any time from a customized backup and restore solution.
Dell EMC has designed and implemented isolated recovery solutions that lock out hackers from the most critical data sets and ensure a path to quick business recovery. Data Domain offers the capability to replicate data securely and asynchronously between systems with a connection air gap implemented during replication idle times. Data Domain replication offers the capability to encrypt data (256bit AES) in flight and at rest, ensuring that data cannot be read either while it is being transferred (man-in-the-middle attacks) or when it is at its final resting place for secure retention. BMG will also assist your organization in making the necessary physical disconnections and security access protocols to ensure that the isolated Data Domain system has no external access points.
As the threat landscape increases, organizations must begin creating a roadmap to safeguard their data and ensure that business downtime is never incurred due to a cyber extortion attempt.
Speak with us today, for total peace of mind.
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