Ransomware Attack – Steps to Recover

Ransomware attacks are growing in popularity due to their effectiveness to fund malicious activity. As recently, the JBS ransomware attack and the Colonial Pipeline show the extent of attacks that can be implemented. A ransomware attack such as these may fund millions towards malicious activity, but these attacks are not only carried out on a massive scale and could affect your own business. If your business is unfortunately attacked by ransomware attacks, the following steps are crucial for your business to bounce back and recover.

The first crucial step in recovering from a ransomware attack is to isolate and shut down business-critical systems. In the event of a ransomware attack, your main objective is to isolate and prevent the malware from spreading or causing any further damage in terms of data loss. Ransomeware will encrypt files, rendering them unusable. The only way to recover data is to remove the encryption through the use of a decryption key.

To ensure that you are able to stop the damage from escalating, shut down all business-critical systems and applications immediately. Ransomeware thrives on being executed on business-critical systems due to its access to sensitive data.

Maintaining some level of business operations is important throughout the recovery. Enacting your business continuity plan, or the play-by-play book that helps all departments understand how the business operates in times of disaster shows the detailed track of how to bring the business back after an incident such as a ransomware attack.

Reporting the cyberattack to law enforcement is essential, as law enforcement can provide access to resources that may not be available otherwise. Law enforcement can investigate further to help with cybercrime.

As a business, you should also report the cyberattack as it may be an indication of future attacks. Once your security professionals are aware of the incident, they can conduct further investigation and prevent any future attacks.

The number one proactive measure for the data that is contained on your business’s website is to have a data backup. After the attack, restoring from backup is the quickest way to maintain business on the website. For example, if the backup saves the website daily or weekly, restoration is easier and less intensive because the data that is lost is only from the day or week that the ransomware attack had taken place and the website can be restored to how it was previously.

The final step to recovering after your business has been affected by a ransomware attack is to remediate the ransomware infection, patch systems that potentially could have led to the initial attack, and monitor the environment closely for further malicious activity.

Interested in learning more about how to prevent malware such as ransomware? Supercharge Your Security With 5 Steps may help.

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