The Woodlands 24/7/365 Critical Crypto
Malware Assessment and Remediation Services

Crypto-Ransomware : Your Worst IT Nightmare
Ransomware has become a modern cyberplague that presents an extinction-level danger for organizations poorly prepared for an attack. Different versions of ransomware like the CrySIS, WannaCry, Bad Rabbit, NotPetya and MongoLock cryptoworms have been replicating for a long time and still cause harm. Newer strains of ransomware like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, Netwalker, LockBit or Egregor, as well as frequent unnamed malware, not only encrypt online information but also infect many available system protection mechanisms. Information replicated to cloud environments can also be corrupted. In a poorly designed environment, this can render any restoration impossible and effectively sets the network back to square one.

Getting back on-line applications and data following a ransomware outage becomes a race against time as the targeted business struggles to contain the damage, remove the ransomware, and restore mission-critical operations. Because ransomware needs time to move laterally, attacks are often sprung at night, when successful attacks tend to take longer to identify. This compounds the difficulty of rapidly assembling and coordinating an experienced mitigation team.

Progent offers an assortment of help services for protecting businesses from ransomware attacks. These include staff training to become familiar with and not fall victim to phishing attempts, ProSight Active Security Monitoring for remote monitoring and management, plus installation of the latest generation security appliances with machine learning capabilities from SentinelOne to detect and suppress zero-day threats automatically. Progent in addition provides the services of experienced ransomware recovery professionals with the skills and perseverance to reconstruct a breached system as rapidly as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Recovery Support Services
Subsequent to a ransomware invasion, sending the ransom demands in cryptocurrency does not guarantee that distant criminals will provide the codes to decrypt any or all of your information. Kaspersky Labs ascertained that 17% of ransomware victims never restored their information after having sent off the ransom, resulting in additional losses. The risk is also costly. Ryuk ransoms are often several hundred thousand dollars. For larger enterprises, the ransom demand can reach millions. The fallback is to re-install the essential elements of your Information Technology environment. Absent access to essential system backups, this requires a broad complement of skill sets, well-coordinated project management, and the capability to work 24x7 until the job is over.

For two decades, Progent has made available professional Information Technology services for companies throughout the U.S. and has achieved Microsoft's Partnership certification status in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's group of subject matter experts (SMEs) includes engineers who have been awarded top certifications in foundation technologies such as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's security experts have garnered internationally-recognized industry certifications including CISA, CISSP-ISSAP, ISACA CRISC, SANS GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Visit Progent's certifications). Progent also has expertise in financial management and ERP applications. This breadth of experience provides Progent the capability to efficiently identify critical systems and re-organize the surviving components of your network system following a crypto-ransomware attack and rebuild them into a functioning network.

Progent's ransomware team of experts has state-of-the-art project management applications to orchestrate the complicated recovery process. Progent understands the importance of working swiftly and in concert with a client's management and Information Technology resources to prioritize tasks and to put essential systems back on-line as fast as possible.

Client Story: A Successful Ransomware Penetration Response
A client sought out Progent after their organization was penetrated by Ryuk ransomware. Ryuk is generally considered to have been created by Northern Korean government sponsored hackers, possibly adopting approaches leaked from the U.S. NSA organization. Ryuk targets specific businesses with little or no tolerance for disruption and is among the most profitable instances of ransomware. Well Known organizations include Data Resolution, a California-based info warehousing and cloud computing company, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's customer is a small manufacturer based in Chicago and has around 500 workers. The Ryuk penetration had shut down all business operations and manufacturing capabilities. The majority of the client's system backups had been on-line at the start of the intrusion and were destroyed. The client was pursuing financing for paying the ransom (more than $200,000) and hoping for good luck, but in the end called Progent.

Progent worked with the customer to quickly determine and assign priority to the mission critical areas that needed to be restored to make it possible to resume business operations:

• Microsoft Active Directory
• Electronic Mail
• Financials/MRP

In less than 48 hours, Progent was able to rebuild Active Directory services to its pre-intrusion state. Progent then charged ahead with reinstallations and storage recovery on essential servers. All Exchange data and attributes were usable, which greatly helped the restore of Exchange. Progent was also able to collect intact OST files (Outlook Off-Line Folder Files) on various PCs in order to recover mail information. A not too old offline backup of the client's accounting/ERP software made them able to recover these essential applications back online. Although a large amount of work still had to be done to recover fully from the Ryuk virus, core systems were recovered rapidly:

Throughout the following couple of weeks critical milestones in the recovery process were completed in close cooperation between Progent consultants and the customer:

• Internal web sites were brought back up with no loss of data.
• The MailStore Exchange Server containing more than four million archived emails was brought online and available for users.
• CRM/Orders/Invoices/Accounts Payable/AR/Inventory functions were 100% operational.
• A new Palo Alto Networks 850 firewall was set up and programmed.
• 90% of the user PCs were back into operation.

Conclusion
A potential business extinction catastrophe was evaded through the efforts of hard-working professionals, a broad spectrum of subject matter expertise, and tight teamwork. Although in retrospect the ransomware virus incident described here would have been identified and blocked with current security technology solutions and ISO/IEC 27001 best practices, user training, and properly executed security procedures for data protection and applying software patches, the fact is that state-sponsored hackers from China, 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 team of experts has extensive experience in ransomware virus blocking, mitigation, and information systems disaster recovery.

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

Additional Crypto-Ransomware Protection Services Offered by Progent
Progent offers businesses in The Woodlands a range of remote monitoring and security evaluation services designed to assist you to minimize your vulnerability to crypto-ransomware. These services utilize next-generation machine learning technology to detect new strains of ransomware that are able to get past traditional signature-based security solutions.

• ProSight Managed Service Plans: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Packages make it possible for small and mid-size companies to utilize Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology to achieve advanced network resilience. Progent handles the daily monitoring and maintenance for you, so your system expands readily without holding you back. For an affordable and predictable monthly subscription, Progent's full-service IT group can be your dependable technology safety net. Entry-level plans include RMM, security, automatic monthly patching, and reporting. As your needs grow, you can add low-cost subscriptions to best-in-class solutions like as SaaS M365/Google Workspace backup, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), penetration testing, or WiFi management.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Monitoring
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop monitoring service that incorporates advanced remote monitoring and management techniques to help keep your network operating at peak levels by checking the health of critical computers that power your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch detects a problem, an alert is sent immediately to your designated IT personnel and your Progent consultant so any looming issues can be resolved before they can impact productivity. Find out more details about ProSight LAN Watch server and desktop remote monitoring services.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Unified RMM for Networks, Servers, and Workstations
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software delivers a unified, cloud-driven solution for managing your client-server infrastructure by providing tools for performing common time-consuming tasks. These include health checking, update management, automated repairs, endpoint setup, backup and recovery, A/V defense, secure remote access, standard and custom scripts, resource inventory, endpoint profile reporting, and debugging assistance. When ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM identifies a serious incident, it transmits an alarm to your designated IT management staff and your assigned Progent consultant so that emerging issues can be taken care of before they interfere with productivity. Learn more details about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop monitoring services.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is a network infrastructure management service that makes it easy and inexpensive for small and mid-sized organizations to diagram, monitor, reconfigure and debug their networking appliances like switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers plus servers, printers, client computers and other networked devices. Incorporating cutting-edge Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology, WAN Watch makes sure that infrastructure topology diagrams are kept current, captures and displays the configuration information of almost all devices connected to your network, monitors performance, and generates alerts when issues are detected. By automating complex network management activities, WAN Watch can knock hours off common chores like network mapping, expanding your network, finding appliances that need important software patches, or identifying the cause of performance issues. Find out more details about ProSight WAN Watch network infrastructure management services.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Applications
  ProSight Reporting is an expanding line of in-depth management reporting plug-ins created to work with the industry's leading ticketing and remote 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 like spotty support follow-up or endpoints with out-of-date AVs. By identifying ticketing or network health concerns clearly and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting improves network value, lowers management hassle, and saves money. For details, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Backup and Recovery Services
  Progent has worked with leading backup software providers to produce ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a portfolio of subscription-based management offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS services automate and monitor your backup operations and enable non-disruptive backup and rapid restoration of important files, apps, images, plus virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps you avoid data loss resulting from hardware failures, natural disasters, fire, malware such as ransomware, user mistakes, malicious insiders, or software bugs. Managed services available in the ProSight DPS product family include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight 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 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 service that incorporates the technology of leading information security companies to provide centralized control and world-class protection for all your email traffic. The hybrid architecture of Email Guard combines cloud-based filtering with an on-premises gateway device to offer advanced protection against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, DHAs, and other email-based threats. Email Guard's cloud filter serves as a first line of defense and blocks the vast majority of threats from reaching your security perimeter. This decreases your vulnerability to inbound attacks and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's onsite gateway appliance adds a deeper level of analysis for incoming email. For outgoing email, the onsite security gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam protection, DLP, and email encryption. The onsite gateway can also assist Microsoft Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that stays within your security perimeter. For more information, see Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Duo Multi-Factor Authentication: Access Security, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo MFA services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against password theft by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables single-tap identity verification on iOS, Android, and other personal devices. Using Duo 2FA, whenever you sign into a secured online account and give your password you are asked to confirm who you are on a device that only you have and that is accessed using a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A broad range of devices can be used for this added form of authentication including an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline telephone, etc. You can register multiple validation devices. For details about ProSight Duo identity authentication services, visit Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for access security.

• Outsourced/Co-managed Call Desk: Call Center Managed Services
  Progent's Help Center managed services allow your IT staff to offload Call Center services to Progent or split responsibilities for Help Desk services transparently between your internal support group and Progent's nationwide pool of certified IT support technicians, engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Co-managed Service Desk provides a smooth supplement to your in-house network support team. Client access to the Help Desk, provision of support, escalation, ticket creation and tracking, efficiency metrics, and maintenance of the support database are consistent regardless of whether issues are resolved by your internal network support resources, by Progent's team, or a mix of the two. Read more about Progent's outsourced/shared Service Desk services.

• Active Defense Against Ransomware: Machine Learning-based Ransomware Identification and Remediation
  Progent's Active Protection Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection (EPP) managed service that utilizes next generation behavior analysis technology to defend endpoint devices and servers and VMs against new malware attacks such as ransomware and email phishing, which routinely get by legacy signature-matching anti-virus tools. Progent ASM services protect on-premises and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to address the complete threat progression including blocking, identification, mitigation, remediation, and forensics. Top features include single-click rollback with Windows VSS and automatic network-wide immunization against new attacks. Read more about Progent's ransomware defense and cleanup services.

• ProSight IT Asset Management: Network Documentation Management
  Progent's ProSight IT Asset Management service is a cloud-based IT documentation management service that allows you to create, maintain, retrieve and safeguard information related to your IT infrastructure, procedures, applications, and services. You can instantly locate passwords or IP addresses and be alerted about impending expirations of SSLs ,domains or warranties. By cleaning up and organizing your IT documentation, you can save up to half of time wasted trying to find vital information about your network. ProSight IT Asset Management features a common repository for holding and collaborating on all documents related to managing your business network such as standard operating procedures and self-service instructions. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers a high level of automation for collecting and associating IT data. Whether you're making enhancements, performing regular maintenance, or responding to a crisis, ProSight IT Asset Management delivers the data you need when you need it. Find out more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services
  Progent's managed services for patch management provide businesses of any size a versatile and affordable solution for evaluating, validating, scheduling, applying, and tracking software and firmware updates to your dynamic IT system. Besides optimizing the protection and functionality of your computer network, Progent's patch management services free up time for your in-house IT staff to focus on line-of-business projects and activities that deliver the highest business value from your network. Find out more about Progent's software/firmware update management services.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted VMs at Progent's World-class 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 Tier III data center on a fast virtual machine host set up and maintained by Progent's IT support experts. Under Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the client owns the data, the OS software, and the apps. Since the system is virtualized, it can be ported easily to an alternate hosting environment without a time-consuming and difficult configuration process. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, you are not locked into a single hosting provider. Find out more details about ProSight Virtual Hosting services.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Endpoint Protection and Ransomware Defense
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection solution that incorporates SentinelOne's cutting edge behavior-based analysis technology to guard physical and virtual endpoint devices against modern malware attacks like ransomware and email phishing, which easily escape legacy signature-based AV tools. ProSight ASM protects on-premises and cloud-based resources and offers a single platform to address the entire malware attack progression including blocking, detection, containment, remediation, and forensics. Key features include one-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic network-wide immunization against new attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring next-generation endpoint protection and ransomware recovery.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection: Physical and Virtual Endpoint Protection and Microsoft Exchange Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) services deliver ultra-affordable in-depth protection for physical servers and virtual machines, workstations, smartphones, and Exchange Server. ProSight ESP uses adaptive security and advanced heuristics for round-the-clock monitoring and reacting to cyber assaults from all attack vectors. ProSight ESP offers firewall protection, intrusion alerts, endpoint control, and web filtering through cutting-edge tools incorporated within one agent managed from a unified console. Progent's security and virtualization consultants can help you to plan and configure a ProSight ESP environment that meets your company's specific needs and that helps you demonstrate compliance with government and industry data protection standards. Progent will assist you specify and configure security policies that ProSight ESP will manage, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and respond to alerts that call for immediate attention. Progent can also help you to install and test a backup and disaster recovery solution such as ProSight Data Protection Services so you can recover rapidly from a destructive cyber attack like ransomware. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection unified physical and virtual endpoint security and Exchange filtering.