Lima 24/7/365 Critical Ransomware
Infection Detection and Recovery Consulting

Ransomware : Your Feared IT Catastrophe
Ransomware has become a too-frequent cyber pandemic that poses an extinction-level danger for businesses poorly prepared for an assault. Multiple generations of crypto-ransomware such as CrySIS, WannaCry, Bad Rabbit, SamSam and MongoLock cryptoworms have been circulating for many years and still inflict damage. More recent versions of ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, LockBit or Egregor, as well as more as yet unnamed viruses, not only encrypt online files but also infect all configured system protection mechanisms. Data replicated to off-site disaster recovery sites can also be ransomed. In a poorly designed system, it can render any restore operations useless and effectively knocks the entire system back to square one.

Getting back online applications and information after a crypto-ransomware event becomes a race against the clock 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 during weekends and nights, when successful attacks tend to take longer to identify. This compounds the difficulty of promptly marshalling and orchestrating a capable response team.

Progent has a range of support services for protecting enterprises from ransomware penetrations. These include staff education to help identify and not fall victim to phishing scams, ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) for remote monitoring and management, in addition to deployment of modern security appliances with AI capabilities from SentinelOne to discover and extinguish zero-day cyber threats quickly. Progent also provides the assistance of veteran crypto-ransomware recovery engineers with the track record and commitment to rebuild a breached environment as soon as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Recovery Support Services
After a crypto-ransomware event, sending the ransom in cryptocurrency does not provide any assurance that distant criminals will respond with the keys to decipher all your files. Kaspersky ascertained that 17% of ransomware victims never restored their files after having sent off the ransom, resulting in additional losses. The risk is also expensive. Ryuk ransoms are often a few hundred thousand dollars. For larger enterprises, the ransom can be in the millions of dollars. The alternative is to piece back together the vital components of your IT environment. Without access to full data backups, this requires a broad complement of skills, professional team management, and the willingness to work continuously until the task is finished.

For twenty years, Progent has offered certified expert Information Technology services for companies throughout the U.S. and has earned Microsoft's Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's pool of subject matter experts (SMEs) includes engineers who have been awarded top certifications in key technologies such as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's cybersecurity specialists have garnered internationally-renowned certifications including CISM, CISSP-ISSAP, CRISC, GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Visit Progent's certifications). Progent in addition has expertise in financial management and ERP application software. This breadth of expertise provides Progent the ability to efficiently ascertain critical systems and re-organize the remaining components of your IT environment following a crypto-ransomware event and configure them into a functioning system.

Progent's ransomware team of experts deploys state-of-the-art project management systems to coordinate the sophisticated restoration process. Progent appreciates the importance of working swiftly and together with a customer's management and Information Technology resources to assign priority to tasks and to put the most important applications back online as soon as possible.

Client Story: A Successful Ransomware Incident Restoration
A business engaged Progent after their network was attacked by the Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is thought to have been developed by North Korean state sponsored hackers, suspected of using approaches exposed from America's National Security Agency. Ryuk targets specific organizations with little or no tolerance for operational disruption and is among the most lucrative versions of ransomware malware. Headline organizations include Data Resolution, a California-based data warehousing and cloud computing company, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's client is a regional manufacturer located in Chicago with around 500 staff members. The Ryuk event had frozen all company operations and manufacturing processes. The majority of the client's information backups had been on-line at the beginning of the attack and were destroyed. The client was evaluating paying the ransom (more than $200K) and hoping for good luck, but ultimately reached out to Progent.

Progent worked with the customer to rapidly get our arms around and assign priority to the essential applications that needed to be restored to make it possible to restart company functions:

• Windows Active Directory
• Microsoft Exchange Email
• Accounting and Manufacturing Software

In less than 48 hours, Progent was able to recover Active Directory to its pre-attack state. Progent then initiated setup and storage recovery on the most important servers. All Microsoft Exchange Server data and configuration information were intact, which facilitated the rebuild of Exchange. Progent was also able to find intact OST data files (Outlook Offline Folder Files) on various desktop computers and laptops in order to recover mail messages. A not too old offline backup of the customer's financials/MRP software made them able to recover these vital services back online for users. Although a large amount of work still had to be done to recover completely from the Ryuk event, core systems were returned to operations quickly:

During the next couple of weeks critical milestones in the recovery project were completed through close cooperation between Progent team members and the customer:

• Internal web applications were brought back up without losing any data.
• The MailStore Server containing more than 4 million archived emails was brought online and available for users.
• CRM/Orders/Invoices/Accounts Payable (AP)/Accounts Receivables/Inventory Control functions were fully operational.
• A new Palo Alto Networks 850 firewall was brought on-line.
• 90% of the user desktops were functioning as before the incident.

Conclusion
A potential enterprise-killing disaster was dodged by hard-working professionals, a wide array of knowledge, and tight teamwork. Although in analyzing the event afterwards the crypto-ransomware virus penetration detailed here would have been stopped with modern cyber security technology solutions and ISO/IEC 27001 best practices, team education, and properly executed incident response procedures for information protection and proper patching controls, the fact is that state-sponsored criminal cyber gangs from Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are relentless and represent an ongoing threat. If you do get hit by a ransomware virus, feel confident that Progent's roster of professionals has a proven track record in ransomware virus defense, cleanup, and file recovery.

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

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Available from Progent
Progent offers businesses in Lima a range of remote monitoring and security assessment services designed to assist you to reduce the threat from ransomware. These services incorporate modern machine learning technology to uncover new strains of ransomware that are able to evade legacy signature-based security products.

• ProSight Managed Service Plans: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Packages make it feasible for small and mid-size businesses to deploy Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology to create advanced network resilience. Progent handles the daily monitoring and maintenance for you, so your network expands easily without becoming an obstacle. For a low and predictable monthly subscription, Progent's full-service IT group can be your dependable technology safety net. Basic plans include remote monitoring and management, security, automatic monthly patching, and documentation. As your requirements grow, you can add low-cost subscriptions to best-of-breed options 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 uses state-of-the-art remote monitoring and management (RMM) technology to keep your network running at peak levels by tracking the health of critical computers that power your information system. When ProSight LAN Watch detects an issue, an alert is transmitted immediately to your specified IT personnel and your assigned Progent engineering consultant so any potential problems can be addressed before they have a chance to impact productivity. Find out more details about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop monitoring consulting.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Unified RMM for Networks, Servers, and Workstations
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software offers a centralized, cloud-driven solution for monitoring and managing your network, server, and desktop devices by offering tools for streamlining common tedious jobs. These include health monitoring, update management, automated repairs, endpoint configuration, backup and restore, anti-virus defense, secure remote access, built-in and custom scripts, asset inventory, endpoint status reporting, and debugging help. If ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM uncovers a serious incident, it transmits an alert to your designated IT staff and your assigned Progent consultant so emerging issues can be fixed before they impact productivity. Learn more about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop monitoring services.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Infrastructure Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is a network infrastructure monitoring and management service that makes it easy and affordable for small and mid-sized organizations to map, monitor, enhance and troubleshoot their networking hardware such as routers and switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers plus servers, client computers and other devices. Using state-of-the-art RMM technology, ProSight WAN Watch makes sure that network maps are always updated, copies and displays the configuration of virtually all devices on your network, monitors performance, and generates notices when potential issues are discovered. By automating tedious management processes, ProSight WAN Watch can knock hours off common tasks such as making network diagrams, expanding your network, finding appliances that need important software patches, or resolving performance issues. Learn more about ProSight WAN Watch network infrastructure management services.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time and In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Platforms
  ProSight Reporting is an expanding suite of real-time and in-depth reporting tools created to work with the industry's leading ticketing and network monitoring programs such as ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and features color coding to highlight and contextualize critical issues like spotty 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 improves network value, lowers 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 partnered with advanced backup technology providers to create ProSight Data Protection Services, a selection of management outsourcing plans that provide backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS products automate and monitor your data backup processes and allow transparent backup and fast restoration of critical files/folders, applications, system images, and virtual machines. ProSight DPS lets your business recover from data loss resulting from hardware breakdown, natural calamities, fire, malware such as ransomware, human mistakes, malicious employees, or software bugs. Managed services in the ProSight Data Protection Services product family include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built hardware, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent expert can help you to determine which of these managed backup services are best suited for your IT environment.

• ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam filtering and email encryption service that incorporates the technology of leading information security vendors to deliver centralized control and comprehensive security for all your inbound and outbound email. The hybrid architecture of Email Guard managed service integrates a Cloud Protection Layer with a local gateway device to offer advanced defense against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based malware. The Cloud Protection Layer serves as a preliminary barricade and blocks most threats from making it to your network firewall. This reduces your exposure to external threats and saves network bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's onsite gateway device provides a further layer of analysis for incoming email. For outgoing email, the local security gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam protection, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The local gateway can also help Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that originates and ends within your security perimeter. For more details, visit Email Guard spam and content filtering.

• ProSight Duo Multi-Factor Authentication: Access Security, Endpoint Remediation, and Protected Single Sign-on
  Progent's Duo authentication service plans utilize Cisco's Duo technology to protect against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication. Duo supports single-tap identity verification on Apple iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using Duo 2FA, when you sign into a secured application and enter your password you are requested to confirm your identity on a unit that only you possess and that uses a separate network channel. A wide selection of out-of-band devices can be used for this second means of authentication such as an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may designate multiple verification devices. For more information about Duo identity validation services, go to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for access security.

• Outsourced/Co-managed Help Desk: Support Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Call Desk managed services allow your information technology group to outsource Help Desk services to Progent or split responsibilities for support services seamlessly between your internal network support team and Progent's extensive pool of IT service engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Shared Help Desk Service provides a seamless supplement to your internal IT support staff. User access to the Service Desk, delivery of support, issue escalation, trouble ticket generation and updates, performance measurement, and maintenance of the service database are consistent regardless of whether issues are taken care of by your internal support group, by Progent's team, or both. Find out more about Progent's outsourced/co-managed Service Desk services.

• Progent Active Protection Against Ransomware: Machine Learning-based Ransomware Detection and Cleanup
  Progent's Active Defense Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection (EPP) managed service that utilizes next generation behavior-based machine learning tools to defend endpoints and servers and VMs against modern malware assaults such as ransomware and email phishing, which easily evade traditional signature-matching AV products. Progent ASM services safeguard on-premises and cloud resources and provides a single platform to manage the entire malware attack progression including protection, detection, mitigation, remediation, and forensics. Key features include single-click rollback using Windows VSS and automatic system-wide immunization against newly discovered threats. Find out more about Progent's ransomware protection and recovery services.

• ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
  ProSight IT Asset Management service is a cloud-based IT documentation management service that allows you to create, update, retrieve and safeguard information about your network infrastructure, processes, business apps, and services. You can quickly find passwords or serial numbers and be warned automatically about upcoming expirations of SSL certificates ,domains or warranties. By updating and managing your IT documentation, you can eliminate up to 50% of time spent looking for critical information about your IT network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a centralized location for holding and sharing all documents related to managing your network infrastructure like recommended procedures and self-service instructions. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers advanced automation for gathering and associating IT data. Whether you're planning improvements, performing maintenance, or reacting to an emergency, ProSight IT Asset Management delivers the knowledge you need when you need it. Read more about Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Progent's Patch Management: Patch Management Services
  Progent's support services for patch management provide businesses of any size a flexible and affordable solution for assessing, testing, scheduling, applying, and tracking software and firmware updates to your dynamic information network. In addition to optimizing the protection and reliability of your computer environment, Progent's patch management services free up time for your in-house IT staff to focus on line-of-business projects and activities that derive maximum business value from your information network. Learn more about Progent's patch management support services.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted Virtual Machines at Progent's Tier III Data Center
  With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small or mid-size business can have its critical servers and applications hosted in a protected fault tolerant data center on a high-performance virtual host set up and managed by Progent's IT support professionals. With the ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the customer retains ownership of the data, the OS platforms, and the applications. Because the system is virtualized, it can be moved immediately to an alternate hardware environment without requiring a lengthy and technically risky reinstallation process. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, your business is not locked into one hosting service. 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 solution that utilizes SentinelOne's next generation behavior-based machine learning tools to defend physical and virtual endpoint devices against modern malware attacks such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely escape traditional signature-based anti-virus tools. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards local and cloud resources and provides a unified platform to automate the complete threat lifecycle including filtering, identification, mitigation, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Key capabilities include one-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and automatic system-wide immunization against newly discovered attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring endpoint protection and ransomware defense.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection: Physical and Virtual Endpoint Security and Microsoft Exchange Filtering
  ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) services offer affordable in-depth security for physical servers and VMs, desktops, smartphones, and Microsoft Exchange. ProSight ESP utilizes contextual security and advanced heuristics for continuously monitoring and reacting to security assaults from all vectors. ProSight ESP offers firewall protection, intrusion alerts, endpoint control, and web filtering via cutting-edge technologies packaged within one agent managed from a single console. Progent's data protection and virtualization consultants can assist you to design and configure a ProSight ESP environment that meets your organization's unique requirements and that helps you prove compliance with legal and industry data security regulations. Progent will help you define and implement policies that ProSight ESP will enforce, and Progent will monitor your network and respond to alerts that call for urgent attention. Progent can also assist your company 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 cyber attack like ransomware. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified physical and virtual endpoint protection and Microsoft Exchange email filtering.