Ransomware infections like WannaCry will come and go, but our job as Cyber Security professionals is to narrow down how to protect our crown jewels. With the escalation of geo-political situations across the world and the exponential growth of internet connectivity, such malware/ransomware infections will increase in sophistication and speed, therefore we cannot be completely immune to such infections. We need to focus on basic Cyber Hygiene – Patch, Backup and Protection. Even with Patch, Backup and Protection, we know of a company that got infected. The worst part was that inspite of doing Patch, Backup and Protection, a new variation of WannaCry deleted this company's onsite online backup image along with the remote data center backup image.
A key lesson learnt from this episode that not only should companies be updated and thorough with Patch, Backup and Protection, but they must also maintain a clean offline copy of the backup images. As hackers (amateurs, organized crime or state-sponsored) become more and more sophisticated, we need to educate our end-users and we also need to act smartly to reduce the risk of Cyber Compromise. With each passing day, while we are busy with our daily tasks, thousand of hackers around the world are getting paid to think about thousands and millions of ways to hack in to our systems for our crown jewels - our information assets. Follow the age old protection methods of Patch, Backup (including offline copy) and Protection (standard security stack of End-point, FW, IPS and Email protection). Make sure that you also conduct an annual security Risk Assessment
By Sanjay Deo.
