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Crypto-Ransomware : Your Crippling IT Catastrophe
Ransomware has become a modern cyber pandemic that represents an extinction-level threat for businesses unprepared for an attack. Versions of ransomware such as CrySIS, WannaCry, Locky, Syskey and MongoLock cryptoworms have been around for a long time and still cause havoc. More recent variants of crypto-ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, Conti or Egregor, as well as frequent as yet unnamed newcomers, not only encrypt on-line data files but also infiltrate many configured system protection mechanisms. Information synched to the cloud can also be encrypted. In a poorly designed data protection solution, it can make any recovery useless and basically knocks the entire system back to square one.

Retrieving services and data following a crypto-ransomware attack becomes a race against the clock as the targeted organization tries its best to contain the damage, remove the ransomware, and resume mission-critical activity. Due to the fact that ransomware requires time to move laterally, penetrations are often sprung at night, when successful attacks in many cases take longer to notice. This multiplies the difficulty of rapidly marshalling and coordinating a qualified mitigation team.

Progent makes available an assortment of help services for securing enterprises from ransomware events. Among these are user education to help identify and avoid phishing exploits, ProSight Active Security Monitoring for remote monitoring and management, in addition to installation of next-generation security appliances with AI capabilities from SentinelOne to identify and disable new cyber attacks rapidly. Progent also offers the assistance of seasoned crypto-ransomware recovery engineers with the skills and perseverance to restore a compromised network as rapidly as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Restoration Support Services
Subsequent to a ransomware event, sending the ransom in cryptocurrency does not provide any assurance that distant criminals will provide the keys to decipher any of your information. Kaspersky Labs estimated that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never restored their files after having sent off the ransom, resulting in increased losses. The gamble is also expensive. Ryuk ransoms are often a few hundred thousand dollars. For larger organizations, the ransom can be in the millions of dollars. The fallback is to setup from scratch the essential elements of your Information Technology environment. Without access to full data backups, this calls for a wide range of IT skills, professional project management, and the ability to work continuously until the task is done.

For two decades, Progent has made available expert IT services for businesses throughout the US and has achieved Microsoft's Partnership certification status in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's team of subject matter experts includes engineers who have earned advanced industry certifications in important technologies such as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's security consultants have garnered internationally-recognized certifications including CISA, CISSP, CRISC, SANS GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Refer to Progent's certifications). Progent in addition has expertise in financial systems and ERP software solutions. This breadth of experience provides Progent the capability to rapidly identify necessary systems and consolidate the remaining parts of your network system following a ransomware event and rebuild them into a functioning network.

Progent's security group utilizes powerful project management tools to orchestrate the sophisticated restoration process. Progent knows the importance of acting swiftly and in unison with a client's management and Information Technology team members to prioritize tasks and to put essential systems back online as soon as humanly possible.

Case Study: A Successful Ransomware Incident Restoration
A client engaged Progent after their network was penetrated by the Ryuk crypto-ransomware. Ryuk is generally considered to have been deployed by North Korean state sponsored criminal gangs, suspected of adopting technology exposed from America's NSA organization. Ryuk seeks specific organizations with limited ability to sustain disruption and is among the most profitable versions of crypto-ransomware. Well Known victims include Data Resolution, a California-based info warehousing and cloud computing business, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's customer is a single-location manufacturing company based in Chicago and has around 500 staff members. The Ryuk event had frozen all company operations and manufacturing processes. The majority of the client's backups had been online at the time of the attack and were destroyed. The client was actively seeking loans for paying the ransom demand (in excess of two hundred thousand dollars) and hoping for good luck, but in the end engaged Progent.

Progent worked hand in hand the customer to quickly identify and assign priority to the key elements that needed to be addressed in order to resume departmental operations:

• Active Directory
• Electronic Mail
• Accounting/MRP

Within 2 days, Progent was able to re-build Active Directory services to its pre-virus state. Progent then initiated reinstallations and hard drive recovery on critical systems. All Exchange ties and configuration information were intact, which greatly helped the rebuild of Exchange. Progent was able to assemble non-encrypted OST data files (Outlook Email Off-Line Folder Files) on team workstations to recover mail messages. A not too old off-line backup of the client's accounting systems made them able to recover these required services back on-line. Although a lot of work remained to recover totally from the Ryuk attack, core services were recovered rapidly:

During the following few weeks important milestones in the restoration process were accomplished through close collaboration between Progent engineers and the customer:

• In-house web applications were returned to operation with no loss of information.
• The MailStore Exchange Server exceeding 4 million archived messages was restored to operations and available for users.
• CRM/Customer Orders/Invoicing/AP/AR/Inventory Control functions were fully restored.
• A new Palo Alto 850 security appliance was deployed.
• Ninety percent of the user desktops and notebooks were functioning as before the incident.

Conclusion
A likely business-killing catastrophe was evaded with hard-working experts, a broad array of technical expertise, and close collaboration. Although in post mortem the ransomware virus penetration detailed here would have been identified and prevented with up-to-date security technology and NIST Cybersecurity Framework best practices, team training, and properly executed incident response procedures for backup and keeping systems up to date with security patches, the reality is that government-sponsored cyber criminals from China, Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are relentless and represent an ongoing threat. If you do get hit by a ransomware incident, feel confident that Progent's team of professionals has proven experience in ransomware virus blocking, remediation, and file restoration.

To review or download a PDF version of this ransomware incident report, please click:
Progent's Ryuk Recovery Case Study Datasheet. (PDF - 282 KB)

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent can provide businesses in Madison a range of remote monitoring and security assessment services to assist you to minimize the threat from crypto-ransomware. These services include next-generation AI technology to uncover new strains of ransomware that are able to evade legacy signature-based security solutions.

• ProSight Managed Service Packages: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Packages make it practical for small and mid-size businesses to deploy Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology to create leading-edge network resilience. Progent handles the necessary monitoring and management for you, so your network expands readily without holding you back. For a low and predictable monthly price, Progent's full-service IT group can be your complete technology safety net. Entry-level plans include RMM, security, automatic monthly patching, and documentation. As your requirements grow, you can add low-cost subscriptions to best-in-class options such as SaaS M365/Google Workspace backup, Multi-Factor Authentication, pen testing, or WiFi management.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Monitoring and Management
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop remote monitoring managed service that incorporates state-of-the-art remote monitoring and management (RMM) techniques to help keep your IT system operating at peak levels by checking the state of vital computers that drive your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch uncovers an issue, an alert is transmitted immediately to your specified IT management staff and your assigned Progent engineering consultant so any potential issues can be resolved before they can impact productivity. Find out more about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop monitoring services.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Unified RMM for Networks, Servers, and Workstations
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software offers a unified, cloud-based solution for monitoring and managing your client-server infrastructure by offering tools for streamlining common tedious jobs. These include health checking, update management, automated remediation, endpoint setup, backup and restore, anti-virus response, remote access, built-in and custom scripts, resource inventory, endpoint status reporting, and debugging support. When ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM spots a serious issue, it sends an alert to your specified IT staff and your Progent consultant so that emerging issues can be taken care of before they interfere with productivity. Find out more details about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop monitoring consulting.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Network Infrastructure Management
  Progent's ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure monitoring and management service that makes it simple and inexpensive for small and mid-sized businesses to map out, track, enhance and debug their connectivity appliances like routers and switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers as well as servers, printers, endpoints and other devices. Incorporating cutting-edge Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology, WAN Watch makes sure that network maps are kept current, copies and manages the configuration of virtually all devices on your network, tracks performance, and sends notices when potential issues are detected. By automating time-consuming network management activities, ProSight WAN Watch can knock hours off ordinary chores such as making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, locating appliances that require critical updates, or resolving performance issues. Find out more about ProSight WAN Watch network infrastructure monitoring and management services.

• ProSight Reporting: In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Applications
  ProSight Reporting is an expanding suite of in-depth reporting utilities designed to integrate with the top ticketing and remote network monitoring applications including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting uses Microsoft Graph and features color coding to surface and contextualize key issues such as spotty support follow-up or machines with missing patches. By identifying ticketing or network health concerns concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting improves network value, reduces management overhead, and saves money. For more information, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Backup and Recovery Services
  Progent has worked with leading backup/restore software providers to produce ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a portfolio of subscription-based management outsourcing plans that deliver backup-as-a-service. ProSight DPS products manage and track your data backup processes and enable transparent backup and fast restoration of critical files/folders, applications, images, plus VMs. ProSight DPS helps your business avoid data loss caused by equipment breakdown, natural disasters, fire, malware like ransomware, human error, malicious insiders, or application glitches. Managed backup services available in the ProSight DPS portfolio include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built hardware, and ProSight MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent consultant can help you to determine which of these managed services are most appropriate for your IT environment.

• 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 information security companies to deliver centralized management and comprehensive protection for all your inbound and outbound email. The powerful architecture of Progent's Email Guard managed service combines a Cloud Protection Layer with a local security gateway appliance to offer complete protection against spam, viruses, Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks, DHAs, and other email-based threats. Email Guard's Cloud Protection Layer acts as a first line of defense and keeps most unwanted email from making it to your security perimeter. This reduces your exposure to inbound attacks and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's onsite security gateway device adds a deeper layer of inspection for incoming email. For outbound email, the on-premises security gateway offers AV and anti-spam protection, DLP, and email encryption. The onsite security gateway can also assist Microsoft Exchange Server to track and protect internal email traffic that originates and ends inside your corporate firewall. For more information, see Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: Access Security, Endpoint Remediation, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo MFA managed services incorporate Cisco's Duo technology to protect against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication. Duo supports one-tap identity verification on iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using Duo 2FA, whenever you log into a protected application and give your password you are requested to confirm your identity on a device that only you possess and that uses a separate network channel. A wide selection of devices can be utilized for this added means of authentication including a smartphone or watch, a hardware token, a landline phone, etc. You may register multiple verification devices. To find out more about ProSight Duo identity validation services, refer to Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for access security.

• Outsourced/Co-managed Service Center: Support Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Call Center services enable your information technology group to outsource Help Desk services to Progent or split activity for Service Desk support seamlessly between your internal support staff and Progent's extensive pool of certified IT support technicians, engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Shared Service Desk provides a smooth extension of your core support team. Client access to the Service Desk, delivery of support, escalation, ticket generation and tracking, performance metrics, and management of the service database are cohesive whether incidents are resolved by your core support organization, by Progent's team, or both. Find out more about Progent's outsourced/co-managed Help Center services.

• Active Protection Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Identification and Cleanup
  Progent's Active Defense Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection managed service that utilizes next generation behavior analysis technology to guard endpoint devices and servers and VMs against modern malware attacks such as ransomware and email phishing, which routinely get by legacy signature-based anti-virus products. Progent Active Security Monitoring services safeguard local and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to automate the complete threat lifecycle including filtering, infiltration detection, mitigation, cleanup, and forensics. Key capabilities include one-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and automatic network-wide immunization against new threats. Learn more about Progent's ransomware defense and cleanup services.

• ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
  ProSight IT Asset Management service is an IT infrastructure documentation management service that allows you to create, maintain, find and protect information about your network infrastructure, processes, business apps, and services. You can instantly locate passwords or IP addresses and be alerted automatically about impending expirations of SSL certificates or warranties. By updating and organizing your IT documentation, you can save as much as half of time thrown away looking for critical information about your network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a common repository for holding and collaborating on all documents required for managing your business network such as standard operating procedures (SOPs) and How-To's. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers advanced automation for collecting and relating IT data. Whether you're making improvements, doing regular maintenance, or reacting to a crisis, ProSight IT Asset Management delivers the information you need the instant you need it. Read more about Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Progent's Patch Management: Patch Management Services
  Progent's managed services for software and firmware patch management provide organizations of any size a versatile and affordable solution for evaluating, validating, scheduling, applying, and tracking software and firmware updates to your dynamic information network. In addition to optimizing the protection and functionality of your IT network, Progent's software/firmware update management services free up time for your in-house IT team to concentrate on line-of-business projects and tasks that deliver maximum business value from your information network. Read more about Progent's software/firmware update 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 key servers and apps hosted in a protected Tier III data center on a high-performance virtual host configured and managed by Progent's IT support experts. Under Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the client owns the data, the operating system platforms, and the apps. Since the environment is virtualized, it can be moved immediately to an alternate hardware solution without a time-consuming and technically risky reinstallation process. 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
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that incorporates SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior machine learning technology to guard physical and virtual endpoint devices against new malware assaults such as ransomware and email phishing, which routinely escape legacy signature-based anti-virus products. ProSight ASM protects local and cloud-based resources and offers a unified platform to manage the complete threat progression including blocking, detection, mitigation, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Top capabilities include single-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and real-time network-wide immunization against new attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Read more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring endpoint protection and ransomware recovery.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection: Physical and Virtual Endpoint Protection and Exchange Email Filtering
  ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) managed services offer economical in-depth protection for physical and virtual servers, workstations, smartphones, and Microsoft Exchange. ProSight ESP uses contextual security and advanced heuristics for continuously monitoring and reacting to security threats from all vectors. ProSight ESP provides two-way firewall protection, penetration alerts, device control, and web filtering via leading-edge tools incorporated within a single agent accessible from a single control. Progent's data protection and virtualization consultants can assist you to design and configure a ProSight ESP environment that addresses your company's unique needs and that allows you achieve and demonstrate compliance with legal and industry information security regulations. Progent will help you specify and configure policies that ProSight ESP will enforce, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and respond to alerts that require urgent attention. Progent can also assist your company to install and verify a backup and disaster recovery solution like ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) so you can recover quickly from a destructive cyber attack such as ransomware. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection unified physical and virtual endpoint security and Exchange email filtering.