In Information Technology such vulnerabilities appear from time to time that can cause extremely serious damages in case they are exploited. This exposure is exponentially increasing as ever-growing part of the business is moving into cyberspace. It is no coincidence that ransomware developers have taken this opportunity.
Ransomware developers create software that can exploit the vulnerabilities of the most popular operating systems in order to infect computers and encrypt data, which means they become inaccessible. If the ransomware manages to install itself successfully, then it usually offers an amount, which has to be paid within a tight deadline in order to restore the encrypted documents to their original form. After the deadline the amount would increase significantly.
There is no guarantee of course that the desperate victims will actually have their documents back if the ransom paid.
Obviously such a ransomware may have catastrophic consequences on the operation of a company. This can easily lead to irreversible data loss, which may result in very serious financial loss.
Could this happen to us as well? How can we protect ourselves?
Unfortunately our experience shows that the situation at several companies is worrisome. During our assessments, we regularly see company systems with a number of vulnerable parts that could be attacked by ransomware, and until now it has only been luck that such an attack has not occurred.
We at Whiteshield basically believe in prevention. Based on our experience, regular and thorough security checks can detect vulnerabilities and deficiencies that a ransomware could exploit in order to infect client computers as well.
If we identify such issues during an assessment, then we always provide our customers with a detailed remediation plan as soon as possible. In case the organisation follows the remediation plan, then these vulnerabilities can quickly be eliminated and the exposure to such an attack can be mitigated.
