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Crypto-Ransomware : Your Crippling IT Disaster
Ransomware has become a too-frequent cyber pandemic that presents an enterprise-level threat for businesses vulnerable to an assault. Different iterations of ransomware like the CryptoLocker, WannaCry, Locky, SamSam and MongoLock cryptoworms have been running rampant for years and still cause harm. The latest strains of ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, LockBit or Egregor, along with frequent unnamed newcomers, not only encrypt on-line critical data but also infect all configured system protection. Files synched to off-site disaster recovery sites can also be ransomed. In a poorly designed system, it can make any restore operations useless and effectively knocks the datacenter back to zero.

Getting back on-line programs and information following a ransomware event becomes a sprint against time as the targeted business tries its best to contain the damage, cleanup the crypto-ransomware, and restore enterprise-critical activity. Due to the fact that ransomware requires time to replicate, penetrations are often launched during weekends and nights, when penetrations tend to take longer to recognize. This compounds the difficulty of promptly mobilizing and organizing a capable mitigation team.

Progent provides a range of solutions for protecting businesses from crypto-ransomware penetrations. Among these are team training to help identify and avoid phishing scams, ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) for remote monitoring and management, plus installation of the latest generation security solutions with AI technology from SentinelOne to discover and quarantine zero-day threats automatically. Progent in addition provides the assistance of veteran crypto-ransomware recovery consultants with the track record and perseverance to rebuild a breached environment as soon as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Recovery Support Services
Soon after a ransomware attack, even paying the ransom in cryptocurrency does not guarantee that merciless criminals will respond with the keys to decrypt any or all of your data. Kaspersky determined that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never restored their data after having paid the ransom, resulting in more losses. The gamble is also costly. Ryuk ransoms are often a few hundred thousand dollars. For larger organizations, the ransom demand can reach millions. The other path is to re-install the essential parts of your IT environment. Absent access to essential system backups, this requires a broad complement of skill sets, well-coordinated project management, and the willingness to work 24x7 until the task is complete.

For decades, Progent has provided expert Information Technology services for businesses throughout the United States and has earned Microsoft's Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's group of subject matter experts (SMEs) includes consultants who have been awarded advanced certifications in leading technologies like Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and popular distributions of Linux. Progent's cybersecurity consultants have earned internationally-recognized certifications including CISM, CISSP, ISACA CRISC, GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Refer to Progent's certifications). Progent also has expertise in financial systems and ERP software solutions. This breadth of experience gives Progent the ability to rapidly ascertain important systems and organize the remaining pieces of your network environment following a crypto-ransomware event and rebuild them into a functioning network.

Progent's security team of experts uses state-of-the-art project management systems to coordinate the complex recovery process. Progent appreciates the importance of working swiftly and together with a client's management and IT resources to assign priority to tasks and to get critical applications back on-line as fast as humanly possible.

Business Case Study: A Successful Ransomware Attack Restoration
A customer contacted Progent after their network system was brought down by the Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is believed to have been developed by Northern Korean state hackers, possibly adopting techniques leaked from the United States NSA organization. Ryuk goes after specific companies with limited tolerance for disruption and is one of the most lucrative versions of ransomware. Major victims include Data Resolution, a California-based information warehousing and cloud computing firm, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's client is a small manufacturing company based in the Chicago metro area and has about 500 employees. The Ryuk penetration had frozen all company operations and manufacturing processes. Most of the client's data backups had been online at the beginning of the attack and were encrypted. The client was actively seeking loans for paying the ransom (in excess of $200K) and hoping for good luck, but in the end utilized Progent.

Progent worked with the client to quickly identify and assign priority to the mission critical applications that needed to be restored in order to resume company operations:

• Microsoft Active Directory
• Exchange Server
• Accounting/MRP

Within 2 days, Progent was able to rebuild Windows Active Directory to its pre-virus state. Progent then initiated reinstallations and hard drive recovery of the most important systems. All Exchange schema and configuration information were intact, which facilitated the rebuild of Exchange. Progent was also able to locate intact OST data files (Outlook Offline Data Files) on staff workstations in order to recover mail information. A not too old offline backup of the client's financials/MRP systems made them able to restore these vital programs back available to users. Although major work needed to be completed to recover completely from the Ryuk virus, the most important services were returned to operations quickly:

Over the next couple of weeks important milestones in the restoration process were completed in tight cooperation between Progent team members and the client:

• In-house web sites were brought back up without losing any data.
• The MailStore Microsoft Exchange Server containing more than 4 million archived messages was brought online and available for users.
• CRM/Customer Orders/Invoicing/Accounts Payable/AR/Inventory modules were fully restored.
• A new Palo Alto 850 firewall was installed.
• Ninety percent of the desktop computers were being used by staff.

Conclusion
A possible business-ending disaster was avoided through the efforts of top-tier experts, a broad array of knowledge, and close teamwork. Although in hindsight the crypto-ransomware penetration detailed here could have been identified and prevented with current cyber security solutions and security best practices, user and IT administrator training, and well thought out incident response procedures for information protection and keeping systems up to date with security patches, the fact remains that state-sponsored criminal cyber gangs from China, Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are tireless and represent an ongoing threat. If you do fall victim to a ransomware incursion, feel confident that Progent's team of professionals has extensive experience in ransomware virus blocking, mitigation, and data disaster recovery.

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

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Available from Progent
Progent offers businesses in Rochester a portfolio of remote monitoring and security assessment services to help you to minimize your vulnerability to ransomware. These services incorporate next-generation machine learning technology to detect zero-day variants of ransomware that are able to evade traditional signature-based anti-virus solutions.

• ProSight Managed Service Packages: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Packages make it possible for small and mid-size companies to deploy Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology to achieve leading-edge IT resilience. Progent takes care of the daily monitoring and maintenance for you, so your system scales smoothly without becoming an obstacle. For a low and predictable monthly price, Progent's full-service IT group can be your complete technology safety net. Basic plans include remote monitoring and management, security, automatic monthly patching, and reporting. As your needs expand, you can add low-cost subscriptions to best-of-breed options such as SaaS M365/Google Workspace backup and restore, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), penetration testing, or WiFi management.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Remote Monitoring
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop remote monitoring managed service that uses state-of-the-art remote monitoring and management (RMM) techniques to help keep your network operating at peak levels by checking the state of critical computers that power your information system. When ProSight LAN Watch uncovers a problem, an alert is transmitted automatically to your specified IT management staff and your Progent engineering consultant so that all looming issues can be addressed before they have a chance to impact your network. Learn more about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop remote monitoring consulting.

• 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-driven platform for managing your network, server, and desktop devices by offering tools for streamlining common tedious jobs. These include health monitoring, update management, automated repairs, endpoint deployment, backup and restore, anti-virus protection, secure remote access, standard and custom scripts, asset inventory, endpoint profile reporting, and troubleshooting assistance. If ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM uncovers a serious problem, it transmits an alert to your designated IT management personnel and your assigned Progent technical consultant so potential issues can be fixed before they impact your network. Learn 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 a network infrastructure monitoring and management service that makes it easy and inexpensive for small and mid-sized organizations to diagram, monitor, reconfigure and debug their networking hardware like switches, firewalls, and load balancers plus servers, endpoints and other networked devices. Using state-of-the-art Remote Monitoring and Management technology, WAN Watch ensures that network diagrams are always updated, captures and displays the configuration information of almost all devices connected to your network, monitors performance, and generates alerts when problems are detected. By automating time-consuming network management activities, ProSight WAN Watch can knock hours off ordinary chores like making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, finding appliances that require important software patches, or isolating performance issues. Find out more details about ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure management consulting.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time and In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Platforms
  ProSight Reporting is an expanding family of in-depth management reporting utilities designed to integrate with the industry's top ticketing and remote network monitoring programs such as ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and utilizes color coding to highlight and contextualize critical issues such as spotty support follow-up or machines with out-of-date AVs. By identifying ticketing or network health problems clearly and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting improves productivity, reduces management overhead, and saves money. For details, see ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS): Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
  Progent has worked with leading backup technology companies to create ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a selection of subscription-based offerings that provide backup-as-a-service. ProSight DPS products automate and track your backup processes and enable non-disruptive backup and rapid recovery of vital files/folders, apps, system images, plus virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps your business protect against data loss caused by hardware failures, natural calamities, fire, cyber attacks like ransomware, human mistakes, ill-intentioned insiders, or software bugs. Managed services available in the ProSight DPS product line include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight ECHO Backup based on Barracuda dedicated storage, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent service representative can assist you to determine which of these fully managed backup 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 and email encryption service that incorporates the infrastructure of top information security companies to provide centralized control and comprehensive security for all your email traffic. The powerful structure of Progent's Email Guard combines a Cloud Protection Layer with an on-premises security gateway device to provide complete defense against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, DHAs, and other email-based threats. Email Guard's Cloud Protection Layer acts as a preliminary barricade and blocks most unwanted email from reaching your network firewall. This decreases your vulnerability to inbound threats and conserves system bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's onsite gateway appliance provides a further level of analysis for inbound email. For outbound email, the on-premises gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The local gateway can also assist Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email traffic that originates and ends inside your corporate firewall. For more details, see Email Guard spam and content filtering.

• ProSight Duo Multi-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Remediation, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo authentication managed services utilize Cisco's Duo technology to defend against compromised passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo enables one-tap identity confirmation with iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. With 2FA, whenever you log into a secured online account and enter your password you are requested to confirm who you are on a device that only you possess and that uses a separate network channel. A broad selection of out-of-band devices can be utilized for this second form of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware token, a landline telephone, etc. You may designate several validation devices. To learn more about ProSight Duo identity validation services, see Duo MFA two-factor authentication services.

• Progent's Outsourced/Shared Help Center: Support Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Help Desk managed services allow your information technology team to offload Support Desk services to Progent or split activity for support services seamlessly between your internal network support group and Progent's nationwide roster of certified IT service engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service offers a seamless supplement to your corporate support group. User access to the Service Desk, provision of support services, escalation, ticket generation and tracking, performance measurement, and maintenance of the support database are cohesive whether issues are taken care of by your internal support staff, by Progent, or by a combination. Learn more about Progent's outsourced/co-managed Help Desk services.

• Active Protection Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Identification and Cleanup
  Progent's Active Protection Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection (EPP) service that incorporates next generation behavior analysis technology to defend endpoint devices and physical and virtual servers against modern malware attacks like ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily get by traditional signature-based anti-virus products. Progent ASM services safeguard on-premises and cloud resources and provides a unified platform to address the entire threat progression including protection, infiltration detection, mitigation, remediation, and forensics. Top capabilities include one-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and automatic network-wide immunization against newly discovered threats. Find out more about Progent's ransomware protection and recovery services.

• ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
  Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service is an IT infrastructure documentation management service that allows you to create, maintain, retrieve and safeguard data about your network infrastructure, procedures, applications, and services. You can instantly find passwords or IP addresses and be warned about impending expirations of SSLs or domains. By updating and managing your network documentation, you can eliminate up to half of time wasted trying to find vital information about your IT network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a centralized location for storing and sharing all documents related to managing your network infrastructure such as standard operating procedures (SOPs) and self-service instructions. ProSight IT Asset Management also supports advanced automation for gathering and relating IT information. Whether you're planning enhancements, doing regular maintenance, or responding to an emergency, ProSight IT Asset Management delivers the data you require when you need it. Find out more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Progent's Patch Management: Patch Management Services
  Progent's support services for patch management offer businesses of all sizes a flexible and cost-effective solution for evaluating, validating, scheduling, implementing, and tracking software and firmware updates to your ever-evolving IT system. Besides optimizing the security and reliability of your IT network, Progent's software/firmware update management services free up time for your in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic initiatives and tasks that derive the highest business value from your network. Read more about Progent's software/firmware update management services.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted Virtual Machines at Progent's Tier III Data Center
  With ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small or mid-size business can have its critical servers and apps hosted in a secure Tier III data center on a fast virtual host set up and maintained by Progent's network support experts. With the ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the client retains ownership of the data, the operating system platforms, and the applications. Since the system is virtualized, it can be ported easily to a different hosting solution without requiring a time-consuming and difficult configuration process. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, you are not locked into one hosting provider. Find out 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) service that incorporates SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior-based machine learning tools to guard physical and virtual endpoint devices against modern malware assaults such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely evade legacy signature-matching AV products. ProSight ASM safeguards local and cloud resources and offers a single platform to address the complete malware attack lifecycle including protection, infiltration detection, mitigation, cleanup, and forensics. Key features include single-click rollback with Windows VSS and real-time system-wide immunization against newly discovered threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) endpoint protection and ransomware recovery.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP): Physical and Virtual Endpoint Protection and Exchange Email Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) managed services offer affordable in-depth security for physical and virtual servers, desktops, mobile devices, and Exchange Server. ProSight ESP uses adaptive security and advanced heuristics for continuously monitoring and responding to cyber assaults from all attack vectors. ProSight ESP offers firewall protection, intrusion alarms, device control, and web filtering via cutting-edge technologies incorporated within one agent managed from a single console. Progent's data protection and virtualization consultants can help you to design and configure a ProSight ESP deployment that meets your organization's specific needs and that helps you demonstrate compliance with government and industry information protection standards. Progent will assist you define and implement security policies that ProSight ESP will enforce, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and respond to alerts that require immediate attention. Progent can also help you to install and verify a backup and restore system like ProSight Data Protection Services so you can get back in business quickly from a potentially disastrous security attack such as ransomware. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) unified endpoint security and Microsoft Exchange email filtering.