With the surge of ransomware threats in the coming years, organizations will need to understand the strategies that will influence ransomware mitigation in the coming year and beyond.
The past couple of years has witnessed a tremendous surge in ransomware attacks. In a rush to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, many organizations failed to take necessary precautionary measures to secure their infrastructure. This has had a significant impact not only on losing revenue but also on reputation.
As per a 2022 report from Blackite, titled, “2022 Third-Party Data Breach Report,” over fifty percent of CISOs stated that they were struck by ransomware at least once in 2021. Over two-thirds of them expect to be hit by at least one ransomware attack in 2022.
Also Read: Evolving Role of the CISO: From Defender to Leader
The intent for ransomware threats changed as attacks evolved from merely delivering ransomware via consumer-target spam to delivering it across the network. Additionally, the threat related to extortion as well as data exfiltration is yet to diminish.
As per industry experts, C-suite executives have finally come to understand the critical role that cybersecurity plays in their business operations. Hence, most organizations have been taking measures to become confident in preventing ransomware attacks. However, to successfully proceed with their initiatives, organizations need to establish an internal commitment towards it. Organizations should take acceptable as well as calculated risks every day if they want to strengthen the cybersecurity infrastructure.
Here are three ransomware strategies that CISOs should implement in 2022:
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Actively invest in training
Insider threats are a prevalent reason for security incidents that are taking place in 2022. Most threats actors are capitalizing on human behavior, especially after identifying vulnerabilities in technological safeguards. Organizations should continue to invest in their employees, and continue to evolve their behavior to become more cyber-aware.
To succeed in their efforts, organizations should begin to invest in processes as well as people. They should put more resources into training their staff on ransomware awareness, including ensuring employees know how they report suspicious messages.
Also Read: Building and Establishing an Effective Cybersecurity Compliance Plan
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Back to square one
Even with the growing sophistication of ransomware, security controls are still largely confined to security basics, no matter what cybersecurity tools the organization adds. Against various security measures, threats actors have shifted their strategies to turn off their mitigation capabilities to deploy ransomware. This has forced organizations to modify security basics.
Organizations, today, are implementing multi-factor authentication for administrative accounts as well as mission-critical business applications accounts. They should revisit patch management strategies so they are based on the risk that takes into account any vulnerabilities having public proof of concept as well as any actively exploited vulnerabilities that are being patched at once.
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Trying to recover funds
In the past couple of years, law enforcement has been heavily involved to crack down on ransomware gangs. Industry experts predict that they will be more involved with the incident response for organizations in the coming year.
Since the cybersecurity industry wants more actions to be taken against cybercriminals or nation-state threats, leading to a general deterrence effect to the cybercriminal undergrounds from which they will continue to operate. However, it does not mean that the operations conducted by law enforcement are not effective. Instead, they are exceptional while developing criminal threat intelligence across the broader cybercriminal underground ecosystem.
Moving ahead, the cybersecurity industry expects more collaboration along with regulatory agencies while creating realistic cybersecurity mandates. It will require governments to get more insights into how regulations could impact the overall business.
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