CISA, FBI, NSA say Severe Increase in Ransomware Attacks - What you can do to stay protected

Cybersecurity authorities from Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. have published a joint warning of an increase in sophisticated high impact ransomware attacks globally in 2021. (according to The Hacker News yesterday) The article goes onto explain that there has been a shift from high profile “big game” hunting in the U.S. to mid-sized victims to evade scrutiny from law enforcement. The agencies involved said that there are three extortions threatening the public currently:

1.     Publicly releasing stolen sensitive information.

2.     Disrupting the victim’s internet access.

3.     Informing the victim’s partners, shareholders, or suppliers about the incident

Said the agencies

            Following the progression of the article in summary, as of this week over 150 terabytes of data has been stolen from victim organizations by ransomware groups from January 2019 up to January 2022. The last tactic illustrated to pay precaution to is that ransomware groups are striking cloud infrastructures to exploit known weaknesses, breaching managed service providers (MSPs) to access multiple victims through one initial compromise, deploying code designed to sabotage.

So what can you do?

·      Keep operating systems and software up to date

·      Limit access to resources over internal networks, especially by restricting RDP and using virtual desktop infrastructure.

·      Raise awareness among user about the risks of phishing

·      Mandate strong unique passwords in everything.

·      Encrypt data in the cloud

To see more ideas click on the original article here.

So, if you or anyone you know have been taken advantage of and are wondering what to do in a scenario like this, be sure not to give any money before talking with your local law enforcement agency. Note that the agencies that issued this warning say not to pay in general or you will be perpetuating the problem.