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Are you a CISO or Information Security Manager looking for a framework that helps you rapidly review and start reducing your exposure to ransomware specific attacks in less than 2 weeks?
If so, you may find this Rapid Ransomware Remediation resource especially helpful.
The Challenge
Ransomware is a very complex and challenging type of cyber attack to protect yourself against. There are many ways ransomware can land on your assets or systems and it can be overwhelming to try to remediate them all in one go.
This inevitably results in large transformation style projects being defined, approved and then delivered over a long time horizon to try and deal with the ransomware threat. This results in a lot of work but the actual risk reduction is delayed considerably by the delivery of these Goliath sized remediation projects.
It doesn’t have to be this way. You can quickly increase your protection from ransomware attacks by hardening your current configuration for things like your browser, email gateway and Microsoft 365 environment. This can be rapid and result in tangible reduction in risk over weeks, not months.
What is Rapid Ransomware Remediation?
Rapid ransomware remediation is a tangible list of configuration hardening tasks and/or controls you can perform quickly to drastically reduce your exposure to ransomware attacks. Our resource is structured as an excel tracker that allows you to review these controls and then take steps to implement them.
These exercises are best run as agile sprints (DevOps) and can last from 2 – 12 weeks.
One doesn’t need a fancy application or database, the value is in knowing what to review, how to harden it and implement the controls.
Why Adopt a Rapid Ransomware Approach?
✅ Reduce Risk Immediately: no need to wait for lengthy transformation style projects to conclude. Update configurations to rapidly reduce your risk now.
✅ Build Confidence: many cyber leaders hide behind lengthy cyber security programmes to deliver tangible benefits to the business. Use a few DevOps style sprints to show you can make highly valuable changes in a short amount of time.
✅ Educate Cyber Security Staff: when running a team of cyber security professionals, it can be important to teach them the benefit of making tangible changes quickly in order to foster a culture of people who are willing to get on with risk reduction, rather than waiting for someone else’s project to do it for them.
✅ Uncover High Risk Areas: by going through this exercise, you will quickly identify areas of your IT infrastructure that are especially susceptible to ransomware attack that you never knew before. Armed with this new knowledge you can take steps to manage that risk effectively.
How a Rapid Ransomware Remediation Exercise Works
- Rapid Assessment: using the resource downloadable from this page, review your current controls and IT infrastructure against the controls in the excel spreadsheet.
- Evaluate Time Commitment: you want to identify those tasks that are ‘Quick Wins’ and those need more time or consideration to be implemented (put into a project at a later date).
- Start DevOps Sprints: run your identified ‘Quick Wins’ through your change control process as DevOps style sprints. Make quick and valuable configuration hardening changes to your email gateway or your desktop gold images. Some quick wins will turn into more challenging and complex beasts as you try to implement them – that’s okay! Move them into the ‘Projects Based Remediation’ so they don’t slow you down.
- Close Sprints: run your sprints until you have enacted all Quick Wins.
- Communicate Benefits: communicate to relevant stakeholders the conclusion of your sprints, all the benefits realised and the tangible reduction in risk that has resulted.
- Scope Out a Project: review those remediation actions which were determined previously to be too ‘meaty’ to address in sprints, and structure them into project(s). Scope out, get approval/budget and deliver those projects.
Benefits of Rapid Ransomware Remediation
- Significant reduction in risk against ransomware attacks over a very short period of time (weeks)
- Your employee and customer personal data is more protected
- Senior management and the executive will have more confidence in your capabilities to reduce risk in the short-term
- Demonstrate to your team and external stakeholders that you don’t need to wait for cumbersome projects to deliver protection against ransomware attacks
What Next?
Please download the resource today (completely free and no email needed) – any questions please get in touch with us.
