Ransomware

It has been a problem for the cybersecurity teams. The threat of remote and hybrid work has become more of a challenge for organizations everywhere.

The wide variety of attacks, significant financial and economic impact, and diverse ways that organizations responded were some of the factors that led to the case study in 2021. The lessons from these attacks can inform future security strategies. The security strategy of an organization should evolve.

The Remote Environment Is Primed for Ransomware

With organizations still supporting remote and hybrid work, they no longer have the visibility and control they once had inside their perimeter. Attackers are taking advantage of the weakness. There are three reasons they are able to do that.

Control and visibility have changed Employees are now working from anywhere. Employees expect seamless access to all resources from personal and unmanaged devices on networks outside of the traditional perimeter. This makes it difficult to understand risks posed by users and the devices they’re working from, and reduces visibility and control that security teams have.

It is easier for attackers to phish credentials if they have mobile devices. Attackers always look for discreet ways into your infrastructure. It is possible to compromise an employee’s credentials to gain legitimate access.

phish employees on mobile devices is their main tactic for stealing credentials. Employees can be targeted through multiple apps because of the use of tablets and smartphones for both work and personal reasons. The simplified user interface of a phone or tablets make them ripe targets for socially engineered phrasing campaigns.

It’s possible to use virtual private networks to enable movement of people. This approach has a number of security flaws, but organizations rely on Virtual Private Network to give their employees remote access. Everyone can get to any app in your infrastructure if they get in, thanks to the unlimited access provided by the VPN. The context under which users or devices connect is not evaluated. There is a need for context to detect activity that is indicative of a compromised account or device.

Three Things You Can Do To Protect Against Ransomware

There are still Ransomware attacks going on. The threat actors have made their operations an enterprise and created profitable campaigns. There are a number of actions that you can take to mitigate the risk.

  1. Protect your managed and unmanaged users. The first step to mitigating against ransomware is visibility into the risk level of devices and users to ensure they aren’t compromised. One compromised user or device can be detrimental to the security of the entire infrastructure. Hybrid work has forced organizations to introduce a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model, which means unmanaged personal devices have access to sensitive data. These devices tend to be less secure than managed devices, so it’s critical that you have proper data controls in place.
  2. Implement granular and dynamic access controls. You need to move away from the all-or-nothing approach of VPNs. With users logging in from anywhere, it’s critical to understand the context under which they’re accessing your corporate apps and data. Applying the principle of Zero Trust will help you provide the right level of access to particular apps and only to the users who need it.
  3. Modernize your on-premises applications. Many organizations still have software that is hosted in data centers and accessible from the internet. To ensure they are secure, update them with cloud access policies that cloak the app – hiding them from the public internet but still enabling authorized users to access them from anywhere. Not only does this provide granular access controls, but it also extends the strong authentication security benefits that SaaS applications have and ensures no unauthorized users can discover and access your infrastructure.

Understand how your data security strategy should adapt to mitigate the risk of ransomware.

In a connected world, organizations need more control of their data. It’s possible to do that with a unified, cloud-centric platform. Lookout’s platform was named a Visionary by the Magic Quadrant in the year 2022. Lookout scored in the top three for all the use cases.