Nearly one-third of all cybersecurity attacks that businesses experience are costly ransomware attacks.

As these digital threats are becoming more sophisticated, cybersecurity companies are seeing this type of cyber extortion on the rise, costing affected businesses millions of dollars in damages due to lost data, lost income, and other liabilities that have resulted.

With ransomware becoming more prevalent and dangerous, cybersecurity services stress the importance of developing effective defenses against these attacks.

By focusing on early mitigation using the following suggestions, CISOs can protect their companies from ransomware attacks and the financial as well as reputation damage they cause.

1. Run Initial and Periodic Ransomware Threat Assessments

Begin the development of an effective cybersecurity plan against ransomware by running an initial threat assessment of the company’s networks and activities.

Penetration tests and risk assessments will expose vulnerabilities that require attention.

Cybersecurity companies stress the importance of periodically re-running these tests to continuously look for new or missed vulnerabilities, as ransomware is continuously changing and becoming more potent over time.

2. Establish and Enforce Company-Wide Ransomware Compliance

When developing a ransomware plan, cybersecurity services recommend that important people within the company such as CEOs, director boards, and important stakeholders should be involved so they can create top-down compliance with it.

From the bottom up, all employees should receive education and training on ransomware risks, risk prevention, and the company’s determined response plan.

3. Conduct Frequent Drills and Tests

After establishing a thorough ransomware cybersecurity defense plan, it is essential to frequently conduct threat drills and continuously test out that plan.

Regular testing ensures the developed plan will reliably detect threats before they manage to exploit the network.

Testing at regular intervals can detect misconfigurations and other vulnerabilities, giving IT personnel the chance to remedy them before an actual attack occurs.

4. Develop and Practice A Response Plan

In addition to generating an effective ransomware defense plan, businesses and their cybersecurity service must also develop an equally effective response plan should a threat be detected.

Response plans that include data backup and recovery should be practiced along with drills and testing for vulnerabilities.

Of key importance is ensuring that backups remain unencrypted for easy restoration and that recovery infrastructure is also protected against attack, especially during recovery.

5. Reduce Vulnerabilities Via A Least Privilege Basis

Another effective way to reduce vulnerabilities within a company and promote compliance with cybersecurity procedures is to apply the Principle of Least Privilege method.

PoLP is a technique encouraged by cybersecurity companies in which access tiers are re-evaluated and reassigned so that restrictions can be used to deny authorization except for those who require it.

Additionally, companies should implement two-factor authentication and encryption company-wide, plus logging, activity monitoring, and other methods of tracking employee activity and access as well as other suspicious activity on the network.

Ransomware Defense Requires A Well-Forged Plan

Cybersecurity defense against ransomware attacks involves much more than just basic network security practices.

As these malicious programs continue to evolve, cybersecurity services that include the skilled development of an effective ransomware protection plan are critical.

Using this outline, businesses can prepare with their cybersecurity company to assess network threats, then create policies and a defense plan that will work for them!