Businesses Are Often Unprepared to Defend Against Ransomware

A recent study of forty CISOs revealed that companies are hesitant to directly combat ransomware in their computing systems, and unfortunately, are slower to defend their cloud infrastructure. Nearly half of the surveyed experts had experienced successful ransomware attacks and had to accept the threat actors’ demands. One of the study’s most unexpected findings was that numerous respondents didn’t think they required a specialized anti-ransomware solution; a multi-layered approach is what organizations preferred.

Unprepared Against Ransomware Attacks

Company leaders believed that they had a ransomware protection strategy in place. In reality, they had an anti-ransomware function as part of a multi-tiered security stack, of which ransomware protection was only one layer. While companies were investing in prevention, it wasn’t always successful because a piecemeal strategy is not 100%. Companies have explored various ransomware prevention strategies. Currently, companies have an average of five different anti-ransomware products or other solutions in place. However, only 22% of companies have a dedicated anti-ransomware program.

What’s more alarming is that companies seem to give their cloud-based assets relatively little thought, assuming the providers have already fortified them. Only 23% of the respondents surveyed feel they will require a new solution to handle ransomware attacks on cloud networks. More than half believe that small changes to their current security suites were sufficient to defend their clouds from ransomware. Even though companies aren’t currently allocating specialized resources to protect their cloud-based assets from ransomware, 75% of respondents already feel that ransomware is attacking cloud resources.

As more data moves to the cloud, there will be an increase in targeted cyberattacks. Even though the majority of respondents are worried about phishing and unpatched vulnerabilities, which are the two main ways that companies and their cloud-based assets are attacked, most haven’t started specifically protecting against these specific cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The study concludes that improved point solutions are needed for both ransomware protection and recovery from damages. Several respondents believe that one solution is not enough to cover the complete spectrum of its risk, instead believing in using a full security stack for a multi-layered strategy that handles many security risks at once. Security teams need to continuously rely on the collective protection, response, and recovery provided by their evolving and expanding security stack in the absence of a point solution.

Even though it’s important to keep in mind that ideal backup systems are not yet available, a holistic approach is vital to best protect business-critical data from ransomware. Additionally, companies need always to remain vigilant of the current threat landscape and regularly update network security infrastructure to protect network data against potential ransomware attacks. At SpearTip, our advisory services focus on imminent threats and offer pragmatic remediation steps to improve companies’ security posture. Our gap analysis allows our engineers to discover blind spots in companies that can lead to significant compromises. We provide companies with a comprehensive picture of the risks present within their cloud infrastructure and the remediation steps for each. ShadowSpear threat hunting allows our Security Operations Center to identify ransomware and advanced persistent threats by evaluating current security measures’ effectiveness to determine an environment’s overall health and prevent breaches.

If your company is experiencing a breach, call our Security Operations Centers at 833.997.7327 to speak directly with an engineer.