Recently the city of Baltimore, MD was hit with a large ransomware attack that has affected 10,000 city operated computer systems. Since the attack:
- City employees have been locked out of their email
- Citizens have been unable to make any municipal payments (utility bills, property taxes, tickets and court fees)
- Real estate transactions have been brought to a halt (coming up on just over two weeks since the attack, the city announced a manual work-around)
Here are a few articles that provide a lot more information on this VERY serious situation.
- https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/21/18634505/baltimore-ransom-robbinhood-mayor-jack-young-hackers
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/baltimore-ransomware-nightmare-could-last-weeks-more-with-big-consequences/
- https://www.npr.org/2019/05/21/725118702/ransomware-cyberattacks-on-baltimore-put-city-services-offline
During my years with SANS, one thing was constantly repeated as a mantra: “Prevention is ideal, detection is a must, detection without response is useless”.
Here is a list of things you must do in order to provide the highest probablity of surviving any type of cyber-attack. In the list we provide what you need to do and the services that MyRemoteSupportTech offers to help protect your I.T. infrastructure.
- Backup Your Systems, Locally & In The Cloud (Offsite) – Backup and Recovery services
- Segment Network Access
- Early Threat Detection Systems – Network and Endpoint Security
- Install Anti Malware / Ransomware Software – Managed Anti-Virus
- Run Frequent Scheduled Security Scans – Remote Monitoring
- Create Restore & Recovery Points
- Train Your Employees and Educate Yourself – Security Awareness Training
- Enforce Strong Password Security
- Think before clicking – Phishing Testing (part of Security Awareness Training)
- Setup Viewable File Extensions
- Block Unknown Email Addresses and Attachments at the Mail Server – Spam Filtering
- Add Virus Control at Mail Server – Email Security
- Apply OS Patches – Patch Management OS
- Apply Third-party Patches – Patch Management Third-Party
- Block Vulnerable Plug-ins – Application Whitelisting
- Limit Internet Connectivity
- Have a Disaster Recovery Plan – Business Continuity and Disaster Planning
Contact MyRemoteSupportTech.com to find out how our Managed Security Services can help protect your business.