Thousand Oaks 24/7/365 Critical Crypto
Virus Identification and Repair Consultants

Ransomware : Your Worst IT Catastrophe
Ransomware has become a too-frequent cyber pandemic that poses an existential threat for businesses unprepared for an assault. Different iterations of ransomware like the CryptoLocker, CryptoWall, Locky, SamSam and MongoLock cryptoworms have been replicating for a long time and still cause destruction. More recent versions of crypto-ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Conti or Nephilim, plus daily as yet unnamed malware, not only do encryption of online critical data but also infect most configured system backups. Information synched to cloud environments can also be ransomed. In a poorly architected system, it can make automatic restoration useless and effectively knocks the entire system back to zero.

Retrieving services and information after a ransomware attack becomes a race against time as the victim fights to stop lateral movement, remove the crypto-ransomware, and restore enterprise-critical activity. Since ransomware takes time to replicate, penetrations are frequently sprung during nights and weekends, when attacks in many cases take longer to identify. This multiplies the difficulty of promptly mobilizing and orchestrating a capable mitigation team.

Progent offers a variety of solutions for protecting enterprises from ransomware penetrations. Among these are user education to help recognize and avoid phishing exploits, ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) for remote monitoring and management, in addition to setup and configuration of next-generation security appliances with artificial intelligence technology from SentinelOne to identify and disable zero-day cyber attacks quickly. Progent in addition offers the assistance of expert ransomware recovery engineers with the track record and perseverance to reconstruct a breached network as urgently as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Recovery Services
After a ransomware penetration, sending the ransom in cryptocurrency does not guarantee that cyber hackers will respond with the needed keys to decipher any or all of your files. Kaspersky Labs ascertained that 17% of ransomware victims never recovered their files after having paid the ransom, resulting in additional losses. The gamble is also very costly. Ryuk ransoms are typically a few hundred thousand dollars. For larger organizations, the ransom can reach millions. The fallback is to re-install the critical components of your IT environment. Absent the availability of essential system backups, this calls for a wide range of skills, professional project management, and the ability to work continuously until the recovery project is complete.

For decades, Progent has offered professional Information Technology services for companies throughout the United States and has achieved Microsoft's Partnership certification status in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's group of subject matter experts includes professionals who have been awarded top industry certifications in foundation technologies like Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's security consultants have earned internationally-renowned certifications including CISM, CISSP-ISSAP, CRISC, SANS GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Visit Progent's certifications). Progent in addition has experience in financial management and ERP software solutions. This breadth of experience gives Progent the ability to knowledgably identify critical systems and organize the remaining components of your Information Technology system after a ransomware event and configure them into an operational network.

Progent's recovery team deploys powerful project management systems to orchestrate the sophisticated restoration process. Progent appreciates the importance of acting swiftly and in concert with a client's management and IT team members to prioritize tasks and to put essential applications back online as soon as humanly possible.

Client Story: A Successful Ransomware Incident Recovery
A client escalated to Progent after their network was taken over by Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is generally considered to have been deployed by Northern Korean government sponsored cybercriminals, possibly using strategies exposed from America's National Security Agency. Ryuk attacks specific organizations with little or no room for operational disruption and is among the most profitable examples of ransomware malware. Headline organizations include Data Resolution, a California-based info warehousing and cloud computing company, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's customer is a small manufacturing company located in the Chicago metro area with about 500 workers. The Ryuk intrusion had paralyzed all business operations and manufacturing processes. The majority of the client's backups had been directly accessible at the time of the attack and were encrypted. The client considered paying the ransom demand (exceeding two hundred thousand dollars) and wishfully thinking for the best, but in the end engaged Progent.

Progent worked hand in hand the client to quickly identify and prioritize the most important areas that had to be restored in order to restart business functions:

• Active Directory (AD)
• Email
• Accounting/MRP

In less than two days, Progent was able to rebuild Active Directory to its pre-virus state. Progent then completed reinstallations and storage recovery on the most important servers. All Exchange Server schema and attributes were usable, which accelerated the rebuild of Exchange. Progent was able to locate local OST files (Outlook Email Off-Line Data Files) on team desktop computers to recover email messages. A recent offline backup of the businesses accounting systems made it possible to return these vital services back available to users. Although a large amount of work was left to recover completely from the Ryuk event, core services were restored quickly:

Throughout the next month key milestones in the recovery process were completed through tight collaboration between Progent team members and the customer:

• In-house web sites were brought back up without losing any data.
• The MailStore Exchange Server with over 4 million historical messages was restored to operations and accessible to users.
• CRM/Orders/Invoicing/Accounts Payable (AP)/Accounts Receivables/Inventory Control capabilities were completely operational.
• A new Palo Alto 850 firewall was installed.
• Nearly all of the desktop computers were back into operation.

Conclusion
A likely enterprise-killing catastrophe was dodged with dedicated experts, a wide range of subject matter expertise, and close collaboration. Although in analyzing the event afterwards the crypto-ransomware attack described here could have been identified and blocked with current cyber security technology solutions and ISO/IEC 27001 best practices, staff education, and well designed incident response procedures for data protection and keeping systems up to date with security patches, the fact is that state-sponsored hackers from Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are tireless and are an ongoing threat. If you do get hit by a ransomware incursion, feel confident that Progent's roster of professionals has proven experience in ransomware virus blocking, cleanup, and data restoration.

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

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent offers companies in Thousand Oaks a range of remote monitoring and security assessment services designed to help you to reduce your vulnerability to ransomware. These services include modern artificial intelligence technology to uncover zero-day variants of crypto-ransomware that are able to evade legacy signature-based security products.

• ProSight Managed Service Packages: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Plans make it realistic for small and mid-size businesses to utilize Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions to create advanced IT resilience. Progent handles the daily monitoring and maintenance for you, so your network scales easily without holding you back. For an affordable and predictable monthly price, Progent's experienced IT group can be your dependable technology safety net. Entry-level plans include remote monitoring and management (RMM), cybersecurity, monthly patching, and reporting. 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 Remote Monitoring and Management
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop remote monitoring service that uses advanced remote monitoring and management (RMM) techniques to help keep your IT system operating at peak levels by tracking the state of critical computers that power your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch uncovers an issue, an alert is transmitted automatically to your specified IT management staff and your assigned Progent engineering consultant so all looming problems can be addressed before they have a chance to impact productivity. Learn more about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop monitoring consulting.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Centralized RMM Solution for Networks, Servers, and Desktops
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software offers a unified, cloud-based platform for managing your client-server infrastructure by providing tools for performing common time-consuming jobs. These include health checking, update management, automated remediation, endpoint configuration, backup and restore, A/V protection, remote access, built-in and custom scripts, resource inventory, endpoint status reporting, and debugging assistance. When ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM spots a serious issue, it sends an alarm to your designated IT personnel and your Progent consultant so emerging issues can be fixed before they impact productivity. Find out more details 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 businesses to map out, monitor, optimize and troubleshoot their networking appliances like routers, firewalls, and load balancers plus servers, client computers and other devices. Using state-of-the-art Remote Monitoring and Management technology, ProSight WAN Watch makes sure that infrastructure topology diagrams are kept updated, copies and manages the configuration information of almost all devices on your network, monitors performance, and sends notices when problems are discovered. By automating complex management activities, ProSight WAN Watch can cut hours off ordinary tasks like making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, finding devices that need critical software patches, or identifying the cause of performance bottlenecks. 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 an expanding line of real-time and in-depth reporting tools designed to integrate with the top ticketing and network monitoring platforms including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting uses Microsoft Graph and utilizes color coding to surface and contextualize critical issues such as spotty support follow-up or endpoints with missing patches. By exposing ticketing or network health concerns clearly and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances productivity, reduces management overhead, and saves money. For details, see ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring platforms.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
  Progent has worked with leading backup software providers to create ProSight Data Protection Services, a family of management offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS products automate and monitor your backup operations and enable transparent backup and fast recovery of critical files, applications, images, and Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps you recover from data loss resulting from hardware breakdown, natural disasters, fire, malware such as ransomware, user mistakes, malicious insiders, or application glitches. Managed backup services available in the ProSight DPS product family include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup based on Barracuda dedicated hardware, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent service representative can help you to determine which of these fully 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 uses the infrastructure of leading information security companies to deliver centralized management and world-class security for your email traffic. The powerful architecture of Email Guard managed service integrates cloud-based filtering with an on-premises security gateway appliance to offer advanced defense against spam, viruses, Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks (DHAs), and other email-borne malware. Email Guard's Cloud Protection Layer acts as a preliminary barricade and blocks most unwanted email from reaching your network firewall. This reduces your exposure to inbound attacks and conserves network bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises gateway appliance adds a further level of inspection for incoming email. For outbound email, the local gateway offers anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, protection against data leaks, and email encryption. The local gateway can also help Microsoft Exchange Server to track and safeguard internal email traffic that stays within your corporate firewall. For more information, see ProSight Email Guard spam and content filtering.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Remediation, and Secure Single Sign-on
  Progent's Duo authentication service plans incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo supports single-tap identity verification on Apple iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using 2FA, whenever you log into a protected online account and give your password you are asked to verify who you are via a device that only you have and that is accessed using a different network channel. A broad selection of out-of-band devices can be used as this second means of authentication including a smartphone or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You can register several verification devices. For details about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services.

• Outsourced/Co-managed Help Desk: Support Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Help Desk services enable your information technology staff to outsource Help Desk services to Progent or split activity for Help Desk services seamlessly between your in-house network support team and Progent's extensive roster of certified IT support engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Service Desk offers a seamless extension of your core support team. End user access to the Service Desk, provision of support services, problem escalation, ticket creation and updates, performance metrics, and maintenance of the service database are consistent whether issues are taken care of by your in-house IT support staff, by Progent's team, or by a combination. Read more about Progent's outsourced/shared 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 machine learning tools to guard endpoint devices as well as servers and VMs against new malware attacks such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely get by traditional signature-matching anti-virus tools. Progent Active Security Monitoring services safeguard local and cloud resources and offers a unified platform to manage the complete threat progression including blocking, infiltration detection, mitigation, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Key capabilities include single-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and real-time network-wide immunization against newly discovered attacks. Learn more about Progent's ransomware protection 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 capture, maintain, retrieve and protect data related to your network infrastructure, processes, business apps, and services. You can quickly find passwords or IP addresses and be alerted about upcoming expirations of SSLs ,domains or warranties. By updating and managing your IT infrastructure documentation, you can save up to 50% of time thrown away looking for vital information about your network. ProSight IT Asset Management includes a common repository for holding and sharing all documents related to managing your business network like standard operating procedures (SOPs) and self-service instructions. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers advanced automation for gathering and relating IT information. Whether you're planning improvements, doing maintenance, or responding to an emergency, ProSight IT Asset Management gets you the data you require when you need it. Learn more about Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Progent's Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services
  Progent's support services for software and firmware patch management offer businesses of any size a versatile and affordable solution for evaluating, testing, scheduling, implementing, and tracking software and firmware updates to your ever-evolving IT system. Besides maximizing the security and functionality of your IT network, Progent's patch management services permit your IT team to concentrate on line-of-business initiatives and tasks that derive maximum business value from your network. Find out 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 or mid-size organization can have its critical servers and apps hosted in a secure Tier III data center on a high-performance virtual host set up and maintained by Progent's IT support experts. With Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting model, the customer owns the data, the operating system software, and the apps. Since the system is virtualized, it can be ported immediately to a different hosting environment without requiring a lengthy and difficult configuration procedure. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, your business is not tied one hosting service. Learn more about ProSight Virtual Hosting services.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that incorporates SentinelOne's next generation behavior-based analysis tools to guard physical and virtual endpoint devices against modern malware attacks such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily escape legacy signature-matching anti-virus tools. ProSight ASM protects local and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to automate the complete malware attack lifecycle including protection, infiltration detection, mitigation, cleanup, and post-attack 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, dealer, and integrator. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring endpoint protection and ransomware recovery.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP): Physical and Virtual Endpoint Protection and Microsoft Exchange Email Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) services offer economical in-depth security for physical servers and virtual machines, desktops, mobile devices, and Microsoft Exchange. ProSight ESP uses contextual security and advanced machine learning for continuously monitoring and responding to cyber assaults from all attack vectors. ProSight ESP delivers two-way firewall protection, intrusion alarms, endpoint control, and web filtering through leading-edge technologies incorporated within a single agent accessible from a unified console. Progent's security and virtualization consultants can help you to design and configure a ProSight ESP deployment that addresses your organization's specific requirements and that helps you achieve and demonstrate compliance with government and industry data security standards. Progent will assist you define and implement policies that ProSight ESP will enforce, and Progent will monitor your network and react to alarms that call for urgent action. Progent's consultants can also assist you to install and verify a backup and restore solution like ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) so you can get back in business quickly from a potentially disastrous security attack like ransomware. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection unified physical and virtual endpoint security and Exchange email filtering.