24/7 Carlsbad Critical Ransomware
Infection Detection and Repair Consultants

Crypto-Ransomware : Your Crippling Information Technology Nightmare
Crypto-Ransomware has become a modern cyber pandemic that poses an extinction-level threat for businesses of all sizes unprepared for an assault. Multiple generations of ransomware like the CrySIS, CryptoWall, Bad Rabbit, NotPetya and MongoLock cryptoworms have been around for years and continue to cause destruction. Recent versions of ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Conti or Egregor, plus daily unnamed viruses, not only encrypt on-line critical data but also infect any configured system backup. Files replicated to off-site disaster recovery sites can also be corrupted. In a vulnerable environment, this can make automatic restoration hopeless and effectively knocks the network back to square one.

Getting back services and information following a ransomware event becomes a race against time as the victim tries its best to stop lateral movement, remove the ransomware, and resume enterprise-critical operations. Due to the fact that ransomware needs time to move laterally, attacks are usually sprung during weekends and nights, when successful penetrations may take more time to discover. This multiplies the difficulty of quickly mobilizing and orchestrating a qualified mitigation team.

Progent offers a range of help services for securing organizations from ransomware penetrations. These include team member education to become familiar with and not fall victim to phishing attempts, ProSight Active Security Monitoring for remote monitoring and management, along with installation of the latest generation security appliances with machine learning capabilities from SentinelOne to detect and disable day-zero cyber threats rapidly. Progent also offers the assistance of expert crypto-ransomware recovery consultants with the talent and perseverance to restore a breached system as quickly as possible.

Progent's Crypto-Ransomware Restoration Services
After a crypto-ransomware attack, sending the ransom demands in cryptocurrency does not provide any assurance that cyber hackers will respond with the needed codes to unencrypt any of your files. Kaspersky estimated that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never recovered their data even after having sent off the ransom, resulting in additional losses. The risk is also costly. Ryuk ransoms are often a few hundred thousand dollars. For larger enterprises, the ransom demand can be in the millions of dollars. The other path is to piece back together the vital parts of your Information Technology environment. Without access to complete data backups, this requires a broad complement of skills, top notch team management, and the willingness to work non-stop until the job is complete.

For decades, Progent has made available professional Information Technology services for businesses throughout the United States and has achieved Microsoft's Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's team of subject matter experts (SMEs) includes engineers who have earned high-level industry certifications in important technologies like Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's security specialists have earned internationally-recognized industry certifications including CISM, CISSP, ISACA CRISC, SANS GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (See Progent's certifications). Progent in addition has expertise with financial management and ERP application software. This breadth of experience gives Progent the ability to efficiently identify important systems and re-organize the remaining components of your network environment after a ransomware attack and assemble them into an operational network.

Progent's recovery team of experts deploys powerful project management systems to orchestrate the complex recovery process. Progent knows the urgency of working quickly and in unison with a customer's management and IT staff to assign priority to tasks and to put the most important services back on-line as fast as humanly possible.

Case Study: A Successful Ransomware Virus Recovery
A customer sought out Progent after their network system was attacked by the Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is thought to have been deployed by North Korean government sponsored hackers, possibly using techniques leaked from the United States NSA organization. Ryuk seeks specific organizations with limited room for disruption and is among the most lucrative iterations of ransomware viruses. Major organizations include Data Resolution, a California-based info warehousing and cloud computing company, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's client is a single-location manufacturer located in the Chicago metro area and has around 500 staff members. The Ryuk event had frozen all essential operations and manufacturing capabilities. Most of the client's backups had been online at the time of the intrusion and were eventually encrypted. The client was pursuing financing for paying the ransom (in excess of $200K) and wishfully thinking for good luck, but ultimately reached out to Progent.

Progent worked together with the customer to rapidly determine and prioritize the essential applications that needed to be restored in order to continue departmental operations:

• Active Directory
• Exchange Server
• Financials/MRP

In less than 48 hours, Progent was able to restore Windows Active Directory to its pre-intrusion state. Progent then assisted with setup and hard drive recovery on key applications. All Exchange Server ties and attributes were intact, which accelerated the restore of Exchange. Progent was able to collect local OST files (Microsoft Outlook Off-Line Data Files) on staff PCs and laptops in order to recover mail information. A recent offline backup of the customer's accounting systems made it possible to restore these required programs back on-line. Although major work still had to be done to recover totally from the Ryuk attack, the most important systems were restored rapidly:

Over the next month key milestones in the recovery process were completed through close collaboration between Progent consultants and the customer:

• In-house web applications were returned to operation without losing any information.
• The MailStore Server containing more than 4 million archived messages was brought online and accessible to users.
• CRM/Customer Orders/Invoices/Accounts Payable (AP)/Accounts Receivables/Inventory Control functions were completely restored.
• A new Palo Alto 850 firewall was set up.
• Ninety percent of the user workstations were back into operation.

Conclusion
A likely business extinction catastrophe was averted with hard-working professionals, a broad array of IT skills, and tight collaboration. Although in analyzing the event afterwards the crypto-ransomware virus incident detailed here could have been identified and disabled with current cyber security systems and recognized best practices, user and IT administrator education, and well thought out security procedures for information backup and keeping systems up to date with security patches, the reality remains that government-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are relentless and are not going away. If you do fall victim to a crypto-ransomware virus, feel confident that Progent's roster of professionals has a proven track record in ransomware virus blocking, removal, and file recovery.

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

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent can provide businesses in Carlsbad a variety of online monitoring and security evaluation services to help you to reduce the threat from ransomware. These services utilize modern artificial intelligence technology to uncover new variants of crypto-ransomware that are able to evade traditional signature-based anti-virus products.

• ProSight Managed Service Packages: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Packages make it feasible for small and mid-size businesses to utilize Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology to create advanced IT resilience. Progent handles the daily monitoring and management for you, so your system scales readily without holding you back. For a low and predictable monthly subscription, Progent's full-service IT team can be your complete technology safety net. Entry-level packages include RMM, security, automatic monthly patching, and reporting. As your needs grow, you can add low-cost subscriptions to best-in-class solutions such as SaaS M365/Google Workspace backup, Multi-Factor Authentication, penetration testing, or WiFi management.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Monitoring and Management
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop monitoring service that uses advanced remote monitoring and management techniques to help keep your IT system running efficiently by checking the state of critical assets that power your information system. When ProSight LAN Watch uncovers a problem, an alert is sent automatically to your specified IT management staff and your Progent consultant so that any potential issues can be resolved before they can disrupt productivity. Learn more 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 delivers a centralized, cloud-driven solution for managing your network, server, and desktop devices by providing an environment for streamlining common tedious jobs. These can include health checking, update management, automated remediation, endpoint configuration, backup and recovery, anti-virus response, remote access, built-in and custom scripts, asset inventory, endpoint status reports, and debugging help. When ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM uncovers a serious issue, it sends an alert to your specified IT management staff and your assigned Progent technical consultant so that potential issues can be fixed before they impact your network. Find out more about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop monitoring consulting.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Infrastructure Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure management service that makes it simple and affordable for smaller organizations to map, monitor, reconfigure and troubleshoot their networking appliances like switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers as well as servers, printers, client computers and other devices. Using cutting-edge Remote Monitoring and Management technology, WAN Watch makes sure that network maps are kept current, captures and manages the configuration information of virtually all devices on your network, monitors performance, and sends alerts when issues are discovered. By automating time-consuming management and troubleshooting activities, WAN Watch can cut hours off common chores like making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, finding devices that require critical updates, or isolating performance issues. Find out more about ProSight WAN Watch network infrastructure monitoring and management services.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Applications
  ProSight Reporting is a growing suite of in-depth management reporting tools designed to integrate with the industry's top ticketing and remote network monitoring applications including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and utilizes color coding to surface and contextualize key issues like spotty support follow-through or machines with missing patches. By exposing ticketing or network health problems clearly and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances productivity, lowers management hassle, and saves money. For details, see ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring platforms.

• ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS): Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
  Progent has partnered with advanced backup software providers to create ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a family of subscription-based offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service. ProSight DPS services manage and monitor your backup processes and allow non-disruptive backup and fast recovery of important files, apps, system images, plus Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps you recover from data loss caused by equipment failures, natural disasters, fire, malware like ransomware, user mistakes, malicious employees, or application bugs. Managed services in the ProSight DPS product line include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup based on Barracuda purpose-built storage, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent service representative can help you to identify which of these fully 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 and virus filtering and email encryption service that incorporates the technology of top data security companies to deliver web-based management and world-class security for your inbound and outbound email. The hybrid architecture of Email Guard managed service combines a Cloud Protection Layer with an on-premises security gateway device to offer advanced defense against spam, viruses, Denial of Service Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based malware. Email Guard's cloud filter acts as a preliminary barricade and blocks the vast majority of threats from making it to your network firewall. This reduces your exposure to inbound threats and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's onsite gateway device provides a further level of analysis for inbound email. For outbound email, the onsite gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The onsite security gateway can also assist Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that stays inside your security perimeter. For more details, visit ProSight Email Guard spam and content filtering.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Secure Single Sign-on
  Progent's Duo MFA services incorporate Cisco's Duo technology to defend against compromised passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo enables single-tap identity confirmation on iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using 2FA, whenever you log into a protected online account and enter your password you are asked to confirm your identity on a unit that only you possess and that uses a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide range of out-of-band devices can be used as this second means of ID validation including an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline telephone, etc. You may register several validation devices. For details about Duo two-factor identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services.

• Outsourced/Co-managed Call Center: Help Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Help Center managed services permit your IT team to outsource Help Desk services to Progent or split activity for support services seamlessly between your internal support staff and Progent's extensive pool of certified IT support engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Co-managed Service Desk offers a seamless supplement to your internal IT support resources. Client access to the Service Desk, provision of support services, issue escalation, trouble ticket creation and tracking, performance metrics, and maintenance of the support database are cohesive regardless of whether issues are taken care of by your corporate support staff, by Progent's team, or both. Learn more about Progent's outsourced/shared Call Center services.

• Active Protection Against Ransomware: Machine Learning-based Ransomware Identification and Remediation
  Progent's Active Protection Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection (EPP) service that utilizes cutting edge behavior machine learning technology to guard endpoint devices and physical and virtual servers against modern malware assaults such as ransomware and email phishing, which easily evade legacy signature-matching AV tools. Progent ASM services safeguard local and cloud resources and offers a unified platform to automate the complete malware attack lifecycle including protection, detection, containment, cleanup, and forensics. Top features include one-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and real-time system-wide immunization against new attacks. Find out more about Progent's ransomware defense and cleanup 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 capture, update, find and protect information about your IT infrastructure, procedures, business apps, and services. You can instantly locate passwords or IP addresses and be warned automatically about impending expirations of SSL certificates or warranties. By updating and organizing your IT documentation, you can eliminate as much as half of time thrown away looking for critical information about your IT network. ProSight IT Asset Management includes a common location for storing and sharing all documents required for managing your network infrastructure such as standard operating procedures (SOPs) and How-To's. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers advanced automation for gathering and relating IT information. Whether you're planning improvements, doing maintenance, or reacting to an emergency, ProSight IT Asset Management gets you the information you need as soon as you need it. Find out more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Progent's Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services
  Progent's support services for software and firmware patch management provide organizations of any size a flexible and cost-effective alternative for evaluating, testing, scheduling, implementing, and tracking software and firmware updates to your dynamic information system. In addition to optimizing the security and functionality of your computer network, Progent's software/firmware update management services permit your in-house IT staff to focus on more strategic projects and tasks that deliver the highest business value from your network. Read more about Progent's patch management support services.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted Virtual Machines at Progent's Tier III Data Center
  With ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small organization can have its key servers and apps hosted in a protected fault tolerant data center on a fast virtual machine host set up and maintained by Progent's IT support professionals. With the ProSight Virtual Hosting model, the client owns the data, the OS platforms, and the apps. Because the system is virtualized, it can be ported immediately to an alternate hardware solution without requiring a lengthy and technically risky reinstallation process. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, you are not locked into one hosting provider. Learn more details about ProSight Virtual Hosting services.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection solution that utilizes SentinelOne's next generation behavior-based analysis technology to defend physical and virtual endpoint devices against new malware assaults such as ransomware and email phishing, which routinely escape traditional signature-matching anti-virus products. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards on-premises and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to manage the complete malware attack progression including filtering, identification, containment, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Top capabilities include one-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service 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 Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection services deliver affordable multi-layer security for physical servers and VMs, workstations, smartphones, and Exchange email. ProSight ESP utilizes adaptive security and advanced machine learning for continuously monitoring and reacting to security threats from all attack vectors. ProSight ESP offers two-way firewall protection, penetration alerts, endpoint control, and web filtering through cutting-edge tools incorporated within a single agent accessible from a single console. Progent's security and virtualization experts can help your business to plan and implement a ProSight ESP environment that addresses your organization's unique requirements and that helps you prove compliance with legal and industry information security regulations. Progent will help you specify and implement security policies that ProSight ESP will manage, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and respond to alarms that require immediate attention. Progent's consultants can also assist you to install and test a backup and restore solution such as ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) so you can get back in business quickly from a potentially disastrous security attack like ransomware. Read more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified physical and virtual endpoint protection and Microsoft Exchange filtering.