24x7 Oakland Emergency Ransomware
Computer Virus Damage Assessment and Removal Consultants

Crypto-Ransomware : Your Feared IT Disaster
Crypto-Ransomware has become a modern cyber pandemic that poses an enterprise-level danger for businesses of all sizes poorly prepared for an attack. Versions of ransomware like the Reveton, WannaCry, Bad Rabbit, Syskey and MongoLock cryptoworms have been out in the wild for a long time and still cause damage. Recent variants of crypto-ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Snatch or Nephilim, plus more unnamed viruses, not only do encryption of on-line information but also infect all accessible system backups. Data replicated to the cloud can also be encrypted. In a poorly architected system, this can make automated restore operations hopeless and basically sets the network back to square one.

Recovering services and data after a ransomware event becomes a race against time as the targeted organization tries its best to stop lateral movement, clear the ransomware, and restore business-critical activity. Since crypto-ransomware takes time to move laterally, penetrations are usually launched on weekends, when successful penetrations typically take more time to identify. This multiplies the difficulty of promptly assembling and orchestrating a capable mitigation team.

Progent provides a range of help services for protecting enterprises from ransomware attacks. These include staff education to help identify and not fall victim to phishing exploits, ProSight Active Security Monitoring for remote monitoring and management, along with deployment of next-generation security solutions with AI technology from SentinelOne to discover and extinguish day-zero cyber threats quickly. Progent in addition can provide the assistance of expert ransomware recovery professionals with the skills and commitment to reconstruct a breached network as urgently as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Restoration Services
Subsequent to a crypto-ransomware invasion, sending the ransom demands in cryptocurrency does not guarantee that criminal gangs will provide the needed codes to decipher any of your data. Kaspersky ascertained that seventeen percent of ransomware victims never restored their data after having sent off the ransom, resulting in more losses. The gamble is also expensive. Ryuk ransoms are typically several hundred thousand dollars. For larger organizations, the ransom demand can be in the millions. The other path is to re-install the essential elements of your IT environment. Absent access to complete data backups, this calls for a broad complement of IT skills, top notch team management, and the capability to work 24x7 until the recovery project is completed.

For two decades, Progent has made available expert IT services for companies throughout the United States and has achieved Microsoft's Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's pool of subject matter experts includes professionals who have earned high-level industry certifications in leading technologies like Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and popular distributions of Linux. Progent's cybersecurity engineers have earned internationally-recognized certifications including CISM, CISSP, CRISC, GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Refer to Progent's certifications). Progent also has experience with financial systems and ERP application software. This breadth of expertise gives Progent the skills to efficiently understand critical systems and re-organize the surviving pieces of your network system following a ransomware event and rebuild them into an operational network.

Progent's security group deploys top notch project management systems to coordinate the sophisticated restoration process. Progent appreciates the urgency of acting swiftly and in concert with a customer's management and IT resources to assign priority to tasks and to put key systems back online as fast as possible.

Customer Story: A Successful Ransomware Attack Restoration
A client escalated to Progent after their organization was crashed by the Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is generally considered to have been developed by Northern Korean state cybercriminals, suspected of using strategies exposed from America's National Security Agency. Ryuk goes after specific businesses with little or no tolerance for operational disruption and is one of the most profitable iterations of ransomware malware. Headline victims include Data Resolution, a California-based info warehousing and cloud computing firm, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's client is a single-location manufacturing company based in Chicago with about 500 staff members. The Ryuk intrusion had shut down all business operations and manufacturing processes. Most of the client's data protection had been online at the start of the intrusion and were encrypted. The client was pursuing financing for paying the ransom (in excess of $200,000) and praying for the best, but in the end brought in Progent.

Progent worked hand in hand the client to quickly identify and prioritize the most important applications that had to be recovered in order to resume business functions:

• Active Directory (AD)
• Microsoft Exchange Server
• Accounting/MRP

Within 2 days, Progent was able to recover Active Directory services to its pre-intrusion state. Progent then completed rebuilding and hard drive recovery on key systems. All Exchange data and attributes were usable, which facilitated the rebuild of Exchange. Progent was able to collect intact OST data files (Microsoft Outlook Offline Data Files) on user PCs in order to recover email messages. A recent off-line backup of the businesses accounting software made them able to recover these required services back available to users. Although significant work remained to recover completely from the Ryuk damage, core services were restored rapidly:

During the next couple of weeks key milestones in the restoration project were completed in tight collaboration between Progent consultants and the client:

• Internal web applications were brought back up with no loss of data.
• The MailStore Microsoft Exchange Server with over 4 million historical emails was spun up and accessible to users.
• CRM/Orders/Invoicing/AP/AR/Inventory Control functions were completely functional.
• A new Palo Alto Networks 850 firewall was deployed.
• 90% of the user workstations were back into operation.

Conclusion
A probable business disaster was evaded with dedicated experts, a wide spectrum of subject matter expertise, and tight teamwork. Although in hindsight the ransomware penetration detailed here would have been blocked with modern security technology and NIST Cybersecurity Framework best practices, team education, and properly executed incident response procedures for backup and proper patching controls, the fact is that state-sponsored cybercriminals from Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are relentless and will continue. If you do fall victim to a crypto-ransomware incursion, feel confident that Progent's team of professionals has a proven track record in ransomware virus defense, mitigation, and file disaster recovery.

To read or download a PDF version of this customer story, please click:
Progent's Ransomware Virus Recovery Case Study Datasheet. (PDF - 282 KB)

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent can provide companies in Oakland a variety of online monitoring and security evaluation services designed to assist you to minimize your vulnerability to crypto-ransomware. These services incorporate next-generation AI technology to uncover zero-day strains of ransomware that can escape detection by legacy signature-based security products.

• ProSight Managed Service Plans: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Plans make it realistic for small and mid-size companies to utilize Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions to achieve advanced network resilience. Progent handles the daily monitoring and maintenance for you, so your network expands readily without becoming an obstacle. For an affordable and predictable monthly subscription, Progent's full-service IT team can be your complete technology safety net. Entry-level packages include remote monitoring and management, cybersecurity, automatic monthly patching, and documentation. As your requirements grow, you can add low-cost subscriptions to best-in-class solutions such as SaaS M365/Google Workspace backup and restore, Multi-Factor Authentication, pen testing, or WiFi management.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Remote Monitoring
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop remote monitoring service that incorporates state-of-the-art remote monitoring and management (RMM) techniques to keep your IT system operating efficiently by tracking the health of vital assets that drive your information system. When ProSight LAN Watch uncovers an issue, an alert is sent automatically to your specified IT staff and your assigned Progent consultant so all looming issues can be resolved before they have a chance to impact your network. Find out more details about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop remote monitoring consulting.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Centralized RMM for Networks, Servers, and Workstations
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software offers a unified, cloud-driven platform for monitoring and managing your client-server infrastructure by providing an environment for performing common time-consuming tasks. These include health checking, update management, automated repairs, endpoint deployment, backup and recovery, A/V protection, remote access, built-in and custom scripts, resource inventory, endpoint status reporting, and troubleshooting assistance. When ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM uncovers a serious incident, it transmits an alert to your designated IT personnel and your assigned Progent consultant so potential problems can be fixed before they interfere with productivity. Learn more details about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop monitoring consulting.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Network Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure management service that makes it simple and affordable for smaller businesses to map, track, optimize and troubleshoot their connectivity hardware like switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers plus servers, endpoints and other networked devices. Using state-of-the-art RMM technology, ProSight WAN Watch ensures that infrastructure topology maps are always updated, captures and manages the configuration of almost all devices connected to your network, tracks performance, and sends notices when issues are discovered. By automating time-consuming network management activities, ProSight WAN Watch can cut hours off common chores like making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, finding devices that require critical software patches, or isolating performance issues. Find out more about ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure monitoring and management services.

• ProSight Reporting: In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Applications
  ProSight Reporting is an expanding family of real-time reporting plug-ins created to integrate with the industry's leading ticketing and remote network monitoring programs including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and utilizes color coding to highlight and contextualize critical issues like inconsistent support follow-through or endpoints with out-of-date AVs. By identifying ticketing or network health problems concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances productivity, reduces management overhead, and saves money. For more information, see ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS): Backup and Recovery Services
  Progent has worked with leading backup software providers to create ProSight Data Protection Services, a family of subscription-based management offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS services automate and track your data backup processes and enable non-disruptive backup and rapid restoration of vital files, applications, images, and virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps your business avoid data loss caused by hardware failures, natural calamities, fire, malware like ransomware, human mistakes, ill-intentioned employees, or software bugs. Managed services in the ProSight Data Protection Services portfolio include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built storage, and ProSight MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent expert can help you to identify which of these managed backup services are most appropriate 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 incorporates the technology of leading data security vendors to provide centralized control and comprehensive security for your email traffic. The powerful architecture of Progent's Email Guard integrates cloud-based filtering with a local gateway device to provide advanced protection against spam, viruses, Denial of Service Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks (DHAs), and other email-based threats. The Cloud Protection Layer acts as a first line of defense and keeps most threats from making it to your security perimeter. This reduces your exposure to inbound attacks and conserves network bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's onsite gateway appliance adds a deeper level of inspection for inbound email. For outbound email, the local gateway provides AV and anti-spam protection, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The onsite security gateway can also help Microsoft Exchange Server to track and protect internal email that stays inside your security perimeter. For more information, visit ProSight Email Guard spam and content filtering.

• ProSight Duo Multi-Factor Authentication: Access Security, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo MFA service plans incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against password theft by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports one-tap identity confirmation with iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. With 2FA, whenever you sign into a protected application and enter your password you are asked to verify your identity on a unit that only you possess and that is accessed using a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A broad range of out-of-band devices can be utilized as this added means of authentication including a smartphone or wearable, a hardware token, a landline phone, etc. You may designate multiple verification devices. For more information about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, refer to Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services.

• Progent's Outsourced/Shared Service Desk: Call Center Managed Services
  Progent's Call Desk managed services permit your IT staff to outsource Help Desk services to Progent or split activity for Service Desk support transparently between your in-house support group and Progent's extensive roster of certified IT support technicians, engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Shared Help Desk Service provides a transparent supplement to your core support resources. End user access to the Help Desk, delivery of support, problem escalation, trouble ticket creation and tracking, performance measurement, and maintenance of the service database are cohesive regardless of whether issues are taken care of by your corporate support organization, by Progent, or both. Learn more about Progent's outsourced/co-managed Help Center services.

• Active Defense Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Detection and Remediation
  Progent's Active Defense Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that incorporates cutting edge behavior machine learning tools to defend endpoints and physical and virtual servers against new malware assaults like ransomware and email phishing, which routinely get by legacy signature-matching AV tools. Progent ASM services protect local and cloud-based resources and offers a unified platform to automate the complete malware attack progression including blocking, infiltration detection, mitigation, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Top capabilities include one-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and automatic system-wide immunization against new attacks. Find out more about Progent's ransomware protection and cleanup services.

• ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
  Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service is a cloud-based IT documentation management service that allows you to capture, maintain, find and safeguard information about your network infrastructure, procedures, business apps, and services. You can instantly find passwords or serial numbers and be alerted automatically about upcoming expirations of SSL certificates ,domains or warranties. By cleaning up and managing your IT infrastructure documentation, you can save as much as 50% of time thrown away looking for critical information about your IT network. ProSight IT Asset Management includes a centralized location for storing and collaborating on all documents related to managing your business network like recommended procedures and self-service instructions. ProSight IT Asset Management also supports a high level of automation for gathering and associating IT information. Whether you're making improvements, doing regular maintenance, or responding to a crisis, ProSight IT Asset Management delivers the data you need as soon as you need it. Find out more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services
  Progent's support services for software and firmware patch management provide organizations of all sizes a versatile and cost-effective solution for assessing, validating, scheduling, implementing, and tracking updates to your ever-evolving IT system. Besides maximizing the protection and functionality of your IT environment, Progent's software/firmware update management services allow your IT team to focus on line-of-business initiatives and activities that derive the highest business value from your network. Find out more about Progent's software/firmware update management support services.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted Virtual Machines at Progent's World-class Data Center
  With ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small or mid-size organization can have its critical servers and applications hosted in a protected fault tolerant data center on a high-performance virtual host set up and maintained by Progent's IT support professionals. With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the client retains ownership of the data, the OS software, and the apps. Since the system is virtualized, it can be moved easily to an alternate hosting environment without requiring a time-consuming and difficult configuration procedure. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, your business is not tied a single hosting provider. Learn more about ProSight Virtual Hosting services.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
  Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that utilizes SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior-based machine learning technology to defend physical and virtual endpoint devices against new malware attacks such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely evade legacy signature-based AV products. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards on-premises and cloud-based resources and provides a single platform to automate the complete threat lifecycle including blocking, identification, mitigation, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Key features include single-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and real-time network-wide immunization against newly discovered threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) next-generation endpoint protection and ransomware defense.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP): Endpoint Security and Microsoft Exchange Email Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection services deliver economical multi-layer security for physical and virtual servers, workstations, smartphones, and Microsoft Exchange. ProSight ESP uses adaptive security and advanced machine learning for round-the-clock monitoring and reacting to security threats from all vectors. ProSight ESP offers firewall protection, penetration alerts, endpoint management, and web filtering via leading-edge technologies packaged within one agent accessible from a single console. Progent's data protection and virtualization consultants can assist your business to plan and implement a ProSight ESP environment that meets your company's specific requirements and that allows you prove compliance with government and industry data protection regulations. Progent will help you specify and implement policies that ProSight ESP will enforce, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and react to alarms that call for urgent action. Progent can also help you to install and test a backup and disaster recovery solution like ProSight Data Protection Services so you can recover rapidly from a destructive security attack such as ransomware. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified physical and virtual endpoint security and Exchange email filtering.