Cyber attackers are constantly looking for a way into your critical IT infrastructure. Whether via an email phishing attack or a mistaken download of malware, it takes merely seconds to open the doors to a breach. Data is then compromised and may be filtrated, encrypted, held hostage, or corrupted leading to demands made by the attacker.
There are many debilitating factors and aftermath effects that occur within the realm of an attack. The work required to instill a solid protection and recovery plan, although complex and involved, carries far less impact and repercussion than a reactive approach.
Organizational resilience drives business processes forward by executing priorities, maintaining operational awareness, and ensuring recovery capabilities. It involves a set of methodologies and practices that allow for preparing, protecting, and recovering. Organizational resilience consists of three key components:
Business security involves being fixed, in place, safe, or free from danger. Because business information and processes are critical, detailed, and confidential, it is vital to keep assets and methodologies as secure as possible. The moment information defenses show weakness, your business data is at risk of being shared with people who will use it to their benefit, without warning.
You want your company, along with its structure, employees, processes, and end results to run smoothly and be successful. It is the combination of these two practices, security and resilience, that gives businesses the ability to prepare for and defend against cyberattacks.
Data is the backbone of modern businesses, holding immense power in driving operations, decision-making, and customer trust. Because of this, protecting data is at the core of today’s cyber and operational resilience strategies. However, traditional Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) plans were not designed to fully address the threats posed by cyberattacks like ransomware. While they provide a foundation for recovery, they often fall short in mitigating the widespread impact of data-centric disruptions.
Ransomware doesn’t just interrupt critical business processes—it directly targets data integrity, availability, and access. Unlike traditional BC/DR plans, an effective ransomware recovery strategy must take a holistic approach, ensuring not only the restoration of systems but also the recovery of end-to-end business services, the entire value chain, and the trust that organizations place in their data.
Ransomware resilience begins with the identification of potential attack points (causes) within the environment. Maintaining security patch levels and application versions for desktops, servers, and storage and backup systems, is critical in preventing attacks. The complex ecosystems and sophisticated infrastructure of businesses today require both detection and prevention applications to add additional protection.
Today’s employees are experiencing cybersecurity burnout. Daily message reminders received both at work and home create a de-sensitization and lax in safe practices. Security personnel need creative means to maintain attentiveness and awareness within the corporate organization. Phishing campaigns and reminder emails aren’t sufficient enough anymore.
Once an attack occurs, communication is pivotal to recovery and minimization of impact. Employees, customers, vendors, shareholders, media, government agencies, and law enforcement must be informed with succinct communications regarding the suspected attack source, its impacts, and the actions being taken to both minimize damage and execute recovery.
Recovery requires identifying critical business services, data dependencies, and restoration priorities. Containing the attack by isolating affected systems prevents further spread. A secure recovery environment is essential, allowing systems and data to be restored from a trusted backup while eliminating malicious code. This forms the foundation for restoring critical business services.
Executive decisions come into play when recovery to a safe point-in-time is completed. Key questions must be addressed, such as:
Augmenting a traditional Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Plan to account for ransomware attacks provides beneficial data which helps answer these questions. Ultimately, there isn’t an absolute solution guaranteeing 100% recovery from a ransomware attack. The impact, however, can be minimized to both counter the costly payment to the attacker and avoid damage to market share and business reputation.
Dealing with cyberattacks needs to be a preventative approach, rather than a reactive measure. It involves each aspect of your business. Your IT staff may be aware and diligent, however if your employees and vendors are unaware of ways that an attack can occur, the precautionary efforts of others are jeopardized. There are several tactics that your business can employ to assure protection against or preparedness for an attack.
For many businesses, engaging in a partnership with a cyber-resource may prove to be the best preventative measure. Having eyes and ears on the core of your IT infrastructure and the peace of mind knowing that it is being monitored 24/7/365 allows you to focus on the areas requiring your expertise.
Cayuse has the resources that enable our clients to implement proactive initiatives for prevention of and recovery from ransomware. Our team has over 75 years of combined experience with:
It takes just one situation, one negative event to completely challenge, threaten, or change your business. Knowledge is power and preparedness is comfort. Utilize the resources you have available to both educate your staff and protect your business. Having a solid ransomware resilience plan in place requires less energy, effort, and expense than discovering and subsequently recovering from an attack.
The combination of security and resilience is vital in the business world. Employing good practices in the work environment is your biggest and most important measure in protecting against a ransomware attack. There are partners in the world of cybersecurity and resiliency too, that can help to assure that your team is managing their efforts and going in the right direction.
Learn more about how the experts at Cayuse can help your business in its resilience and security initiatives!