Ransomware attacks are becoming more daunting – are you prepared?

Right now, corporate IT leaders who oversee security fortification are enduring perhaps the most challenging time period they ever have. As the world looks to adapt to the new reality of remote and hybrid work, security professionals are faced with a broad spectrum of users, locations, devices, and endpoints. It’s almost impossible for them to keep an eye on everything simultaneously. And, unfortunately, it’s even harder when you realize they’re also facing the most sophisticated threat landscape we've ever seen.

According to VentureBeat, ransomware is getting more aggressive than ever, right before our eyes. New research from IBM X-Force shows that there’s been “a major decrease in the overall time between initial access and ransom requests” – in other words, attacks happen faster now than ever before. To be exact, 94.34% faster. Between 2019 and 2021, the amount of time it took for a ransomware attack to affect your business dropped from over two months to just a little more than three days.

“The criminal economies that support ransomware have continued to operationalize the business of ransomware,” said John Dwyer, head of research at IBM Security X-Force. “We’ve seen large increases in efficiency through things like the ‘ransomware as a service’ model, which has significantly lowered the barrier of entry for criminals to join in on the ransomware business.”

Exacerbating this problem is the fact that most organizations lack the resources needed to detect intrusions quickly and respond to them in time. IBM’s research also found that the average business takes 212 days to initially detect a breach – and of course, by that time, the typical attacker has already been able to wreak havoc on your IT. Clearly, your organization needs a strategy that’s proactive, sniffing out possible attacks before they even happen and working quickly to prevent them.

What Dwyer recommends is a zero-trust security architecture. In other words, your IT should be set up so that no device – and no user – is automatically trusted to access your network and your data. You should trust no one and verify everyone. This way, there will never be any surprises.

This is a major trend in IT, both in 2022 and moving forward. Companies are working quickly to draw up a zero-trust framework as well as an incident response process. This helps them cover all their bases. They’re preventing cyberattacks from happening, but they’re also ensuring that if an attack ever does happen anyway, they have a systematic approach to deal with the issue and minimize the damage to their IT.

At Zones, we are ready to lend a helping hand with each and every step in this process. Our approach to Security Fortification is a holistic one, focused on defending every aspect of your IT infrastructure. We are here to be an end-to-end partner for professional and managed services relating to cybersecurity, offering a range of solutions including vulnerability assessments, managed security operations, access policies, and information security governance.

To learn more, just reach out. A Zones Account Manager would love to hear from you.

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