3 anti-ransomware tips to help you evade attacks and protect your environment

Luck is not an anti-ransomware strategy, but that’s all that kept shipping conglomerate Maersk afloat as they suffered a ransomware attack in 2017. Suddenly – globally – all of their Active Directory servers were encrypted…except one, which only escaped due to a power cut in Lagos. In a similar attack, FX company Travelex was even less fortunate, and was forced into administration with the loss of 1,000 jobs.

Ransomware is an ever-evolving danger that threatens to cripple companies large and small. In 2021 alone, ransomware breaches grew by 41%, leading to $350 million in ransomware payouts due to innovations like Ransomware-as-a-Service and malicious human-operated campaigns.

But the trend doesn’t have to continue, and you don’t have to be a part of it. SHI can reinforce your technology stack decisions and processes, ensuring they will work with your existing infrastructure while avoiding negative impacts on the user experience of your employees, partners, and customers.

Protect yourself before hackers prey on you. Take advantage of our three unmissable practices for the prevention of ransomware attacks.

1. Trust the framework

Implementing a framework is half the battle. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) knows this well, and publishes a Ransomware Risk Management Framework that helps organizations develop, improve, and maintain their cybersecurity strategy. This outline allows companies to identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover from harmful cyberattacks.

Recognizing that some organizations are more security-aware than others, NIST provides security framework tiers designed to provide guidance about the key connection between cybersecurity risk management and operational risk management processes. However, guidance is only the beginning, and the first actions you take are crucially important for ensuring your security.

2. Practice defense in depth

The best laid plans, and the best practices, are only as good as their implementation.

SHI and leading vendors recommend defense in depth. This approach uses multiple layers of security for holistic protection. Creating a layered defense helps organizations reduce vulnerabilities, contain threats, and mitigate risk.

Luck isn’t lab-tested; our solutions are.

However, there isn’t one security vendor that can offer this holistic anti-ransomware strategy. From offline data backups to network segmentation to endpoint security, a robust anti-ransomware strategy will combine multiple vendors, environments, and operational processes. Luckily, SHI can provide data-driven recommendations specific to your environment. We’ll support you in making confident decisions about how your anti-ransomware strategy will impact your people, technology, and processes—which makes the third tactic all the more important.

3. Choose the right partner

Vendors do not have a holistic view of your environment. Their value statements are often based on their solutions rather than the impact they may have on your ecosystem. SHI acts as a vendor-neutral security advisor, helping you make informed, data-driven decisions based on your current landscape and future goals. We start by delivering network and security assessments that define your existing IT environment, aligning business requirements and lifecycle constraints to achieve successful outcomes.

The unarguable impact of those services isn’t a result of estimation but experimentation. The SHI Customer Innovation Center labs provide critical insight into the interoperability of solutions within a customer-specific environment. Ahead of any investment, you can expect all use cases to be thoroughly mapped. By testing potential technologies and best practices against these use cases, you can draw confident, data-driven conclusions about investment impact. And with SHI support in planning and user testing, plus active stakeholder engagement, you can reduce the risk of a fragmented solution stack, poor usability, and the associated security risks.

Ultimately, when investing in security, look beyond vendor claims to establish how new tools and processes will impact your current tech stack, landscape, and targets. The client-specific solution testing of our proposed integrations allows you to make confident decisions with data-based analysis, leading to stakeholder buy-in and budget approval.

Luck isn’t lab-tested; our solutions are. Get in touch with our team to sure up your organization’s anti-ransomware security today.