Irrespective of size, companies need to protect against ransomware attacks

Deep threat intelligence and research are key to outsmarting cybercriminals, and a critical success factor is to disrupt the attack before it becomes the business disruptor, say experts working on cou
Cyber hacking (Picture courtesy: Geektech.in)
Cyber hacking (Picture courtesy: Geektech.in)

NEW DELHI: Deep threat intelligence and research are key to outsmarting cybercriminals, and a critical success factor is to disrupt the attack before it becomes the business disruptor, say experts working on countering the ransomware attacks across the world.

According to a Cisco 2017 Mid-Year Cyber Security Report, ransomware is one of the main threats to digital business. Globally, around 49 per cent of businesses experienced at least one cyber ransom attack in 2016.“The escalation in ransomware attacks in the digital economy makes every organisation a target,” says Neville Burdan, general manager - security at Dimension Data Asia Pacific.
Early this week, Dimension Data, the global ICT services and solutions provider, and Cisco jointly published a white paper to help organisations stay ahead of ransomware threats.

‘Ransomware: The Pervasive Business Disruptor’ — the paper looks ransomware trends and how to respond before a threat becomes a business disruptor.“Just security controls cannot protect organisations from the threat; they need to adopt a multi-layered approach to break the cyber kill chain,” says Shankar Narayan, a cyber security consultant to many multinational firms in the US and Europe.

Deep threat intelligence means identifying emerging threats, quick detection, a swift response to an attack, all the way through to the backup and recovery process as a strategy and standard operating procedure.
Burdan suggests a six-point framework that every chief technology officer must adopt. These include: Predict and be informed before the attack occurs; Protect identity and access management tools; Deploy technologies to detect anomalies in the infrastructure; Respond quickly when an ransomware incident has been detected; and, have robust backup system to prevent replication of files that were maliciously encrypted by ransomware.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com