Ransomware Readiness: 6 Steps to Secure Your Organization Against Ransomware

Businesses must proactively protect their assets, resources, and data from ransomware to avoid risking brand reputation, losing customer loyalty, and facing significant financial payouts.

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Overview

How to Prevent Ransomware & Minimize Its Impact

Ransomware is a harsh reality in today’s world of digital business, and the damage it can inflict on an organization continues to worsen.

There were 2,321 reported ransomware attacks globally between January and June 2024, which represents an increase from the number recorded during the first six months of 2023 and about half the total number tracked for the entire year, according to the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. Security Intelligence reports that ransomware payments in 2024 reached record highs, with victims paying nearly $460 million to cyber criminals.

The largest single ransom payment also occurred in 2024, when an undisclosed Fortune 50 company paid $75 million to the Dark Angels ransomware group. The median ransom, which was less than $199,000 in early 2023, also dramatically surged to $1.5 million in June 2024, and the average ransom demand in 2024 rose to $2.73 million, nearly $1 million more than in 2023.

The threat of ransomware is both undeniable and constant. While it’s nearly impossible for organizations to prevent all malicious ransomware attacks, they can adopt best practices and strengthen their defenses to significantly mitigate the risk of major damage. With a solid backup and recovery approach, businesses can prevent significant damage during a ransomware attack and enable a fast recovery and return to normal following any disruption. Comprehensive data protection and recovery processes will help you secure your data and prevent ransomware from bringing down your business.

6 Prevention Must-Haves

Ransomware Prevention Must-Haves

Ransomware prevention and protection requires a multi-layer approach that involves best practices and processes, empowers people with education, and takes advantage of the latest technologies to arm an organization against bad actors. A multi-layer security strategy is paramount recovery readiness is critical. 

1. Educate and train employees regularly.
Businesses can protect against ransomware by providing regular training to employees to help them identify malicious attacks. For instance, phishing attempts often rely on social engineering approaches that attempt to trick end users into revealing sensitive information. Train employees, partners, and customers on the signs of such social engineering attempts to avoid them falling victim to an attack.

Teach employees about safe browsing habits and explain why it is important to not click on suspicious links, reinforcing them with knowledge on how to spot and avoid potential threats. Education will empower employees to act as the first line of defense against ransomware attacks by making smarter decisions online – and avoiding known pitfalls.

2. Enforce an immutable backup strategy.
Backup strategies need to be as sophisticated as the bad actors’ best attempt at ransomware. A widely accepted data protection practice involves maintaining three copies of data, storing it on two different types of media, and keeping one copy safely stored off-site.

This 3-2-1 approach mitigates data loss risks in the face of ransomware by diversifying storage locations and media types. Create three copies of critical data, including the original data on the primary system and two backup copies. Store the backup copies on two distinct types of storage media, such as a local hard drive and cloud storge, to prevent a single point of failure.

Experts recommend that businesses store a copy of their data in a secondary storage such as a hyperscale appliance, tape, or on cloud storage. This type of media can help in storing data in ransomware protection mode, which is not easily accessible to ransomware attacks. Be certain one of the backup copies is stored in a remote location, separate from the primary data center, to prevent against local natural disasters.

It is also critical to invest in immutable backup. An immutable backup is a file or data copy that cannot be altered or modified in any way, meaning it remains unchanged even by administrators or malicious actors. Immutable backup protects against data deletion and provides that secure backup that can be restored even if the primary system is compromised by ransomware. Once the backup is made immutable, it cannot be deleted, overwritten, or modified in any way – which is valuable for safeguarding ransomware attacks.

3. Utilize isolation, segmentation, and air gap techniques.
Isolation and air gap techniques refer to a security strategy in which backup data is stored separated and physically isolated from the primary network. This creates a gap that prevents unauthorized access to backup copies, shielding them from any potential malware or ransomware attacks that might infect the primary system. Backup data is separated into isolated storage targets using virtual LANs (VLAN), firewalls, or other network segmentation methods to restrict access. Segmenting the network also will prevent east-west or lateral movement by attackers if they have been able to penetrate perimeter defenses.

Deploy the isolated backup storage to be physically disconnected from the primary network, preventing direct access to the data. Replicate the data to this isolated environment to be sure the backup copies are security transferred to the air-gapped storage. By isolating backup data, air gap techniques significantly reduce the risk of ransomware, encrypting backup copies, as the malware cannot reach them on the isolated network.

4. Implement access controls, user privileges, and intrusion detection systems (IDS).
To better understand the state of an organization’s entire security posture, it is critical to review access control policies and implementation. Review how end users connect to the network internally and externally, and put safeguards in place from password protections to multi-factor authentication on VPNs or any portals or resources that can be accessed remotely by end users or employees.

A robust IDS will proactively look for malicious activity by comparing network traffic logs to signatures that detect known malicious activity. The IDS will alert the organization in the event it detects any malicious activity. This type of layered approach to security including IDS, VPN, firewalls, antivirus software, spam filters, and cloud data loss prevention will make accessing your environment and sensitive data more difficult for would-be attackers.

5. Regularly monitor the environment.
Most organizations already regularly monitor their environments, but to thwart ransomware, monitoring is critical to enable early detection of suspicious activity that could be indicative of an attack. Monitoring traffic for suspicious activity will help security teams identify malware or ransomware earlier and take proactive measures to stop the ransomware from spreading.

With comprehensive data and traffic monitoring systems in place, security teams also can encrypt data before significant damage occurs. Unusual file access patterns, rapid data encryption, or anomalous network traffic all can point to an attempted ransomware attack and by constantly monitoring system activity, security teams can spot bad actors and act quickly to contain the threat.

6. Develop an incident response plan.
All these protections will help prevent and detect malicious activity, but in the event an attack happens, an incident response plan will provide the necessary steps to take after discovering an attack – and reduce the likelihood of future attacks. An incident response plan should detail how to collect data to determine the source, nature, and scope of the ransomware attack. True cyber recovery, which goes beyond incident response, encompasses the ability to quickly restore critical systems and data after an attack.

Organizations should regularly test their incident response plan, so that the people involved understand their roles and responsibilities following a ransomware attack. Consistent testing of the incident response plan also will validate its effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. It is critical to invest in a platform that allows for rapid data recovery and restoration in the event of a cyberattack, providing a swift response and minimizing downtime.

Businesses must invest in a multi-layered ransomware readiness approach, which highlights the importance of robust data protection to prevent threats, detect suspicious activity early, and provide swift recovery of data even in the event of an attack. Using immutable, air-gapped backups, continuous monitoring, and advanced anomaly detection across various environments, organizations can prioritize proactive protections and rapid restoration capabilities to minimize business disruption.

What is a Data Cleanroom?

Cleanroom recovery provides security teams with an isolated environment to perform investigations, find gaps in defenses, and safely recover data without risk of contamination.

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What is a 3-2-1 Backup Plan?

The 3-2-1 backup rule is a cornerstone of modern data protection and digital resilience. Facing an intensifying threat landscape, organizations rely on the 3-2-1 rule so that a clean copy of critical data will be available in the event of a cyberattack, natural disaster, or hardware failure.

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What is Disaster Recovery?

Disaster recovery (DR) is the process of restoring an organization’s IT infrastructure and operations after a major disruption or disaster.

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