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Crypto-Ransomware : Your Worst IT Nightmare
Ransomware has become a too-frequent cyber pandemic that poses an existential threat for organizations vulnerable to an attack. Different versions of ransomware like the Reveton, Fusob, Bad Rabbit, Syskey and MongoLock cryptoworms have been circulating for years and still inflict harm. Newer strains of crypto-ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Conti or Nephilim, along with frequent as yet unnamed newcomers, not only do encryption of on-line critical data but also infect all configured system protection. Data synchronized to off-site disaster recovery sites can also be corrupted. In a poorly architected system, this can render automatic restoration hopeless and basically sets the entire system back to square one.

Recovering applications and data after a ransomware intrusion becomes a sprint against time as the targeted business tries its best to stop lateral movement, eradicate the ransomware, and restore mission-critical activity. Due to the fact that crypto-ransomware requires time to move laterally, penetrations are frequently sprung on weekends, when attacks tend to take more time to recognize. This multiplies the difficulty of quickly marshalling and coordinating a capable response team.

Progent has a variety of services for protecting organizations from ransomware penetrations. These include team member education to help identify and not fall victim to phishing attempts, ProSight Active Security Monitoring for remote monitoring and management, along with deployment of next-generation security solutions with machine learning technology from SentinelOne to discover and disable day-zero threats intelligently. Progent also can provide the services of seasoned ransomware recovery consultants with the talent and commitment to restore a breached system as soon as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Recovery Help
Following a crypto-ransomware penetration, paying the ransom in cryptocurrency does not provide any assurance that cyber hackers will return the codes to decrypt all your information. Kaspersky Labs determined that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never recovered their files after having sent off the ransom, resulting in additional losses. The risk is also expensive. Ryuk ransoms are often several hundred thousand dollars. For larger organizations, the ransom can be in the millions of dollars. The other path is to setup from scratch the essential elements of your IT environment. Without the availability of essential system backups, this requires a wide range of IT skills, top notch project management, and the willingness to work 24x7 until the task is finished.

For decades, Progent has provided certified expert Information Technology services for companies across the U.S. and has earned Microsoft's Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's pool of subject matter experts includes consultants who have earned top industry certifications in foundation technologies such as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's cybersecurity specialists have garnered internationally-recognized certifications including CISA, CISSP-ISSAP, ISACA CRISC, SANS GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Visit Progent's certifications). Progent also has expertise in financial systems and ERP application software. This breadth of experience affords Progent the capability to efficiently ascertain necessary systems and re-organize the remaining components of your computer network system after a crypto-ransomware attack and assemble them into a functioning system.

Progent's recovery team of experts uses best of breed project management systems to coordinate the complicated restoration process. Progent knows the importance of working swiftly and together with a customer's management and IT team members to prioritize tasks and to get essential services back on-line as soon as humanly possible.

Customer Story: A Successful Crypto-Ransomware Virus Restoration
A customer engaged Progent after their network system was taken over by the Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is thought to have been created by North Korean state sponsored hackers, suspected of using approaches leaked from the U.S. National Security Agency. Ryuk seeks specific companies with little ability to sustain disruption and is among the most lucrative versions of ransomware viruses. Headline organizations include Data Resolution, a California-based information warehousing and cloud computing firm, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's customer is a single-location manufacturer located in the Chicago metro area with about 500 employees. The Ryuk event had disabled all business operations and manufacturing capabilities. Most of the client's backups had been directly accessible at the time of the intrusion and were encrypted. The client was actively seeking loans for paying the ransom (exceeding two hundred thousand dollars) and praying for the best, but ultimately utilized Progent.

Progent worked with the client to rapidly identify and prioritize the critical areas that had to be recovered in order to resume business operations:

• Active Directory
• Exchange Server
• Financials/MRP

Within 48 hours, Progent was able to rebuild Windows Active Directory to its pre-intrusion state. Progent then initiated reinstallations and hard drive recovery on key applications. All Microsoft Exchange Server ties and attributes were intact, which facilitated the restore of Exchange. Progent was also able to collect non-encrypted OST data files (Outlook Off-Line Folder Files) on staff desktop computers to recover mail data. A recent off-line backup of the businesses accounting systems made it possible to return these essential applications back online for users. Although a lot of work was left to recover completely from the Ryuk damage, critical systems were restored quickly:

During the next few weeks critical milestones in the recovery project were accomplished in close collaboration between Progent team members and the customer:

• Internal web applications were restored with no loss of data.
• The MailStore Microsoft Exchange Server with over four million historical messages was brought on-line and available for users.
• CRM/Product Ordering/Invoices/AP/AR/Inventory capabilities were 100 percent operational.
• A new Palo Alto Networks 850 firewall was brought on-line.
• Most of the desktops and laptops were fully operational.

Conclusion
A potential business-killing catastrophe was dodged through the efforts of hard-working professionals, a broad range of knowledge, and close teamwork. Although in retrospect the ransomware penetration detailed here could have been identified and disabled with modern security systems and NIST Cybersecurity Framework or ISO/IEC 27001 best practices, team education, and well thought out incident response procedures for backup and applying software patches, the reality remains that government-sponsored hackers from Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are relentless and will continue. If you do fall victim to a ransomware incident, feel confident that Progent's team of professionals has substantial experience in ransomware virus blocking, mitigation, and file disaster recovery.

To review or download a PDF version of this case study, click:
Progent's Crypto-Ransomware Incident Recovery Case Study Datasheet. (PDF - 282 KB)

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent can provide businesses in Charleston a variety of remote monitoring and security assessment services designed to help you to reduce your vulnerability to ransomware. These services incorporate modern artificial intelligence technology to detect new variants of ransomware that are able to escape detection by traditional signature-based security products.

• ProSight Managed Service Plans: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Packages make it realistic for small and mid-size businesses to deploy Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology to achieve advanced IT resilience. Progent takes care of the necessary monitoring and management for you, so your system expands smoothly without holding you back. For an affordable and predictable monthly price, Progent's full-service IT group can be your complete technology safety net. Basic packages include RMM, security, automatic monthly patching, and documentation. As your requirements expand, you can add low-cost subscriptions to advanced solutions like as SaaS M365/Google Workspace backup, Multi-Factor Authentication, penetration testing, or WiFi management.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Remote Monitoring and Management
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop remote monitoring managed service that incorporates advanced remote monitoring and management techniques to keep your IT system running at peak levels by checking the health of vital computers that power your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch detects a problem, an alarm is transmitted immediately to your designated IT management staff and your Progent engineering consultant so that any looming problems can be addressed before they can disrupt productivity. Learn more details about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop monitoring services.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Unified RMM Solution for Networks, Servers, and Desktops
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software offers a centralized, cloud-based solution for monitoring and managing your network, server, and desktop devices by providing tools for streamlining common tedious jobs. These can include health checking, update management, automated remediation, endpoint deployment, backup and recovery, anti-virus protection, secure remote access, standard and custom scripts, resource inventory, endpoint profile reports, and debugging assistance. When ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM identifies a serious issue, it sends an alarm to your specified IT management staff and your Progent consultant so emerging issues can be taken care of before they interfere with your network. Learn more details about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop monitoring services.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
  Progent's ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure monitoring and management service that makes it easy and inexpensive for small and mid-sized businesses to map out, monitor, optimize and troubleshoot their networking appliances like switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers as well as servers, client computers and other devices. Using cutting-edge RMM technology, WAN Watch ensures that infrastructure topology diagrams are always updated, copies and manages the configuration information of virtually all devices on your network, tracks performance, and generates alerts when potential issues are detected. By automating complex network management activities, ProSight WAN Watch can cut hours off ordinary chores like network mapping, reconfiguring your network, finding devices that require critical updates, or isolating performance issues. Find out more about ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure monitoring and management consulting.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Platforms
  ProSight Reporting is a growing family of real-time reporting tools created to work with the leading ticketing and remote network monitoring platforms including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting uses Microsoft Graph and features color coding to surface and contextualize critical issues such as spotty support follow-up or endpoints with missing patches. By identifying ticketing or network health problems concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances productivity, lowers management overhead, and saves money. For details, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Backup and Recovery Services
  Progent has partnered with advanced backup/restore technology providers to create ProSight Data Protection Services, a family of subscription-based management outsourcing plans that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS services manage and monitor your backup operations and allow non-disruptive backup and rapid recovery of important files/folders, applications, images, plus virtual machines. ProSight DPS lets your business avoid data loss resulting from hardware failures, natural calamities, fire, malware such as ransomware, human mistakes, malicious insiders, or application glitches. Managed backup services available in the ProSight Data Protection Services product family include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup using Barracuda dedicated storage, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent consultant can assist you to identify which of these managed services are best suited for your network.

• ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam filtering service that uses the technology of top information security companies to provide centralized control and comprehensive protection for all your inbound and outbound email. The hybrid architecture of Email Guard managed service combines cloud-based filtering with a local gateway device to offer advanced protection against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, DHAs, and other email-borne threats. The cloud filter acts as a preliminary barricade and keeps most threats from making it to your network firewall. This reduces your vulnerability to external threats and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises gateway appliance provides a further level of analysis for inbound email. For outbound email, the local gateway offers AV and anti-spam protection, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The local gateway can also help Exchange Server to track and protect internal email traffic that originates and ends within your security perimeter. For more information, see ProSight Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo authentication managed services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables single-tap identity confirmation on iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. With Duo 2FA, whenever you log into a secured online account and give your password you are requested to verify who you are via a device that only you possess and that uses a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A broad selection of devices can be used for this second form of authentication including an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may designate multiple validation devices. To find out more about ProSight Duo identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for access security.

• Progent's Outsourced/Shared Call Desk: Help Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Support Center managed services enable your IT staff to outsource Support Desk services to Progent or divide activity for Help Desk services transparently between your in-house support group and Progent's nationwide pool of IT service technicians, engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Shared Help Desk Service provides a smooth supplement to your corporate support resources. User interaction with the Service Desk, provision of support services, issue escalation, ticket creation and tracking, performance measurement, and maintenance of the support database are consistent whether issues are resolved by your corporate IT support resources, by Progent, or by a combination. Find out more about Progent's outsourced/shared Call Center services.

• Progent Active Defense Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Identification and Remediation
  Progent's Active Protection Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection solution that utilizes cutting edge behavior analysis tools to guard endpoint devices and servers and VMs against new malware attacks like ransomware and email phishing, which easily get by traditional signature-based AV products. Progent Active Security Monitoring services safeguard on-premises and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to automate the entire malware attack lifecycle including protection, identification, mitigation, cleanup, and forensics. Top features include single-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic system-wide immunization against new threats. Learn more about Progent's ransomware defense and recovery services.

• ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
  ProSight IT Asset Management service is a cloud-based IT documentation management service that makes it easy to create, update, retrieve and safeguard information related to your network infrastructure, procedures, business apps, and services. You can quickly locate passwords or IP addresses and be alerted about impending expirations of SSLs or domains. By cleaning up and managing your IT documentation, you can save up to half of time wasted trying to find vital information about your network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a centralized repository for holding and sharing all documents related to managing your business network like standard operating procedures (SOPs) and How-To's. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers a high level of automation for gathering and relating IT information. Whether you're planning improvements, performing regular maintenance, or responding to a crisis, ProSight IT Asset Management delivers the information you require as soon as you need it. Find out more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Progent's Patch Management: Patch Management Services
  Progent's managed services for patch management offer organizations of all sizes a flexible and affordable alternative for assessing, validating, scheduling, applying, and tracking updates to your ever-evolving IT network. Besides optimizing the security and functionality of your computer network, Progent's software/firmware update management services free up time for your in-house IT team to focus on line-of-business projects and tasks that deliver the highest business value from your information network. Learn more about Progent's software/firmware update management support services.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted Virtual Machines at Progent's Tier III Data Center
  With ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small or mid-size organization can have its key servers and applications hosted in a protected fault tolerant data center on a high-performance virtual host configured and maintained by Progent's network support professionals. With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting model, the client retains ownership of the data, the operating system software, and the applications. Since the environment is virtualized, it can be moved easily to a different hosting environment without requiring a time-consuming and technically risky reinstallation procedure. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, you are not tied a single hosting provider. Find out more details about ProSight Virtual Hosting services.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that incorporates SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior-based analysis technology to guard physical and virtual endpoint devices against modern malware assaults like ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily escape traditional signature-based anti-virus tools. ProSight ASM protects on-premises and cloud-based resources and offers a unified platform to automate the complete threat progression including protection, identification, containment, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Key capabilities include one-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic system-wide immunization against newly discovered attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring endpoint protection and ransomware recovery.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP): Endpoint Protection and Microsoft Exchange Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection services offer economical in-depth protection for physical servers and virtual machines, workstations, mobile devices, and Exchange Server. ProSight ESP utilizes adaptive security and modern behavior analysis for continuously monitoring and responding to security threats from all vectors. ProSight ESP provides firewall protection, intrusion alarms, device control, and web filtering through cutting-edge technologies incorporated within one agent accessible from a single console. Progent's security and virtualization consultants can assist you to design and configure a ProSight ESP deployment that addresses your organization's unique requirements and that helps you achieve and demonstrate compliance with legal and industry data protection standards. Progent will assist you define and configure security policies that ProSight ESP will manage, and Progent will monitor your network and respond to alarms that call for urgent attention. Progent's consultants can also help you to set up and verify a backup and restore system such as ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) so you can get back in business rapidly from a destructive security attack such as ransomware. Read more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified physical and virtual endpoint protection and Microsoft Exchange email filtering.