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Malware Identification and Recovery Services

Ransomware : Your Feared IT Disaster
Ransomware has become a modern cyberplague that poses an extinction-level threat for organizations vulnerable to an assault. Versions of crypto-ransomware such as Reveton, Fusob, Locky, Syskey and MongoLock cryptoworms have been running rampant for years and still cause harm. Newer strains of ransomware such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Conti or Nephilim, along with additional unnamed newcomers, not only do encryption of online files but also infect any configured system protection. Data replicated to the cloud can also be held hostage. In a poorly designed data protection solution, this can make automatic restoration useless and basically knocks the network back to square one.

Getting back on-line programs and information following a ransomware event becomes a race against time as the targeted organization struggles to stop lateral movement, eradicate the ransomware, and restore enterprise-critical activity. Due to the fact that ransomware requires time to spread, penetrations are usually sprung during weekends and nights, when successful penetrations typically take more time to recognize. This multiplies the difficulty of quickly assembling and coordinating a capable mitigation team.

Progent makes available a range of support services for securing businesses from ransomware penetrations. Among these are team member education to become familiar with and not fall victim to phishing scams, ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) for remote monitoring and management, in addition to installation of modern security solutions with AI capabilities from SentinelOne to discover and extinguish day-zero cyber threats intelligently. Progent in addition provides the services of seasoned crypto-ransomware recovery consultants with the skills and perseverance to rebuild a breached network as quickly as possible.

Progent's Ransomware Recovery Services
Subsequent to a ransomware invasion, sending the ransom demands in cryptocurrency does not provide any assurance that distant criminals will provide the keys to decrypt any of your files. Kaspersky ascertained that 17% of crypto-ransomware victims never restored their information even after having paid the ransom, resulting in more losses. The risk is also very costly. Ryuk ransoms are often a few hundred thousand dollars. For larger enterprises, the ransom can be in the millions. The other path is to re-install the mission-critical elements of your Information Technology environment. Without access to complete information backups, this requires a wide complement of skill sets, professional team management, and the capability to work 24x7 until the task is over.

For two decades, Progent has made available expert Information Technology services for businesses throughout the US and has earned Microsoft's Partnership certification in the Datacenter and Cloud Productivity competencies. Progent's group of subject matter experts includes professionals who have been awarded high-level certifications in key technologies including Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and major distributions of Linux. Progent's cybersecurity specialists have earned internationally-renowned industry certifications including CISM, CISSP-ISSAP, CRISC, SANS GIAC, and CMMC 2.0. (Refer to Progent's certifications). Progent in addition has experience with financial management and ERP software solutions. This breadth of experience provides Progent the skills to efficiently understand important systems and organize the surviving components of your Information Technology system following a crypto-ransomware event and configure them into an operational system.

Progent's recovery group has state-of-the-art project management applications to orchestrate the complicated restoration process. Progent appreciates the urgency of working rapidly and in unison with a customer's management and Information Technology staff to prioritize tasks and to get the most important systems back online as fast as possible.

Client Case Study: A Successful Crypto-Ransomware Incident Recovery
A small business sought out Progent after their network system was brought down by Ryuk ransomware virus. Ryuk is thought to have been created by Northern Korean state sponsored criminal gangs, suspected of using algorithms leaked from the United States NSA organization. Ryuk attacks specific companies with limited tolerance for operational disruption and is among the most lucrative versions of ransomware. High publicized organizations include Data Resolution, a California-based info warehousing and cloud computing business, and the Chicago Tribune. Progent's client is a small manufacturing company located in the Chicago metro area with around 500 workers. The Ryuk penetration had brought down all business operations and manufacturing capabilities. The majority of the client's data backups had been online at the time of the attack and were damaged. The client was evaluating paying the ransom (exceeding $200K) and praying for the best, but ultimately utilized Progent.

Progent worked together with the customer to quickly get our arms around and prioritize the critical services that needed to be recovered to make it possible to resume company functions:

• Windows Active Directory
• E-Mail
• Accounting and Manufacturing Software

In less than 2 days, Progent was able to re-build Active Directory to its pre-virus state. Progent then initiated setup and storage recovery on critical servers. All Microsoft Exchange Server schema and configuration information were usable, which facilitated the rebuild of Exchange. Progent was also able to find non-encrypted OST files (Microsoft Outlook Offline Data Files) on various PCs in order to recover mail data. A not too old offline backup of the customer's accounting/MRP software made it possible to return these essential programs back available to users. Although a large amount of work still had to be done to recover totally from the Ryuk damage, the most important systems were recovered quickly:

Over the next couple of weeks critical milestones in the restoration process were accomplished through close cooperation between Progent consultants and the client:

• Internal web applications were restored without losing any data.
• The MailStore Microsoft Exchange Server exceeding 4 million historical emails was brought online and available for users.
• CRM/Customer Orders/Invoicing/Accounts Payable/AR/Inventory Control capabilities were completely recovered.
• A new Palo Alto Networks 850 security appliance was brought on-line.
• Ninety percent of the user workstations were fully operational.

Conclusion
A probable company-ending catastrophe was avoided due to top-tier professionals, a broad array of knowledge, and close teamwork. Although in retrospect the ransomware virus penetration detailed here should have been disabled with modern security technology solutions and NIST Cybersecurity Framework or ISO/IEC 27001 best practices, user education, and well thought out security procedures for information protection and applying software patches, the reality is that government-sponsored cybercriminals from Russia, North Korea and elsewhere are tireless and are an ongoing threat. If you do get hit by a ransomware incident, remember that Progent's team of experts has proven experience in ransomware virus blocking, cleanup, and file restoration.

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

Additional Ransomware Protection Services Available from Progent
Progent offers companies in Boston a range of online monitoring and security evaluation services designed to help you to minimize your vulnerability to ransomware. These services utilize next-generation machine learning technology to uncover new variants of ransomware that can escape detection by legacy signature-based security products.

• ProSight Managed Service Packages: for Small to Mid-size Businesses
  Progent's ProSight Managed IT Service Plans make it feasible for small and mid-size businesses to utilize Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions to achieve advanced IT resilience. Progent takes care of the necessary monitoring and management for you, so your network scales smoothly without holding you back. For a low and predictable monthly price, Progent's experienced IT team can be your complete technology safety net. Entry-level packages include remote monitoring and management (RMM), cybersecurity, automatic monthly patching, and reporting. As your needs grow, you can add low-cost subscriptions to advanced solutions such as SaaS M365/Google Workspace backup and restore, Multi-Factor Authentication, penetration testing, or WiFi management.

• ProSight LAN Watch: Server and Desktop Remote Monitoring
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's server and desktop monitoring managed service that uses state-of-the-art remote monitoring and management technology to keep your network operating at peak levels by tracking the state of vital computers that power your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch uncovers an issue, an alarm is transmitted immediately to your specified IT staff and your Progent engineering consultant so that any looming issues can be addressed before they can disrupt productivity. Learn more 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-based platform for monitoring and managing your client-server infrastructure by offering an environment for streamlining common tedious jobs. These include health checking, update management, automated remediation, endpoint deployment, backup and restore, A/V response, secure remote access, built-in and custom scripts, asset inventory, endpoint profile reports, and debugging support. If ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM uncovers a serious incident, it transmits an alarm to your specified IT personnel and your Progent technical consultant so that emerging issues can be taken care of before they impact productivity. Find out more about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop remote monitoring consulting.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Infrastructure Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure monitoring and management service that makes it simple and affordable for small and mid-sized organizations to map, track, enhance and troubleshoot their networking appliances such as routers and switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers plus servers, printers, client computers and other devices. Using cutting-edge Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology, WAN Watch makes sure that infrastructure topology diagrams are kept updated, copies and displays the configuration of almost all devices connected to your network, monitors performance, and generates notices when problems are detected. By automating tedious management processes, ProSight WAN Watch can knock hours off ordinary tasks like making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, locating appliances that require important software patches, or isolating performance bottlenecks. Find out more details about ProSight WAN Watch 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 reporting tools designed to integrate with the industry's leading ticketing and network monitoring programs 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 such as spotty support follow-through or endpoints with missing patches. By exposing ticketing or network health concerns concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances productivity, lowers management overhead, and saves money. For more information, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
  Progent has partnered with leading backup/restore software providers to create ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a family of subscription-based management offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS products manage and monitor your data backup operations and allow transparent backup and rapid restoration of critical files, apps, images, plus virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps you avoid data loss caused by hardware failures, natural disasters, fire, malware such as ransomware, human error, malicious employees, or application glitches. Managed services in the ProSight Data Protection Services product family include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup based on Barracuda dedicated storage, and ProSight MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent consultant can help you to determine which of these managed backup services are most appropriate 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 uses the technology of top information security companies to provide centralized control and world-class protection for your email traffic. The powerful structure of Email Guard integrates a Cloud Protection Layer with a local gateway device to provide complete protection against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks (DHAs), and other email-based threats. The Cloud Protection Layer acts as a preliminary barricade and blocks most threats from reaching your security perimeter. This reduces your exposure to external threats and saves network bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's on-premises security gateway appliance adds a deeper layer of analysis for inbound email. For outgoing email, the on-premises gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam protection, DLP, and email encryption. The onsite security gateway can also help Exchange Server to track and safeguard internal email traffic that originates and ends within your corporate firewall. For more information, see ProSight Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Duo Multi-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Secure Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo MFA service plans incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables one-tap identity confirmation with iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. Using 2FA, whenever you sign into a protected online account and give your password you are requested to verify your identity via a device that only you possess and that is accessed using a different network channel. A wide range of devices can be utilized for this added form of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or wearable, a hardware token, a landline telephone, etc. You can designate multiple verification devices. For details about Duo two-factor identity authentication services, see Duo MFA two-factor authentication services.

• Outsourced/Co-managed Help Center: Help Desk Managed Services
  Progent's Call Center managed services allow your information technology team to outsource Help Desk services to Progent or divide responsibilities for Help Desk services seamlessly between your in-house network support team and Progent's extensive roster of IT support technicians, engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Service Desk offers a seamless extension of your core IT support resources. Client access to the Service Desk, provision of technical assistance, problem escalation, trouble ticket creation and updates, efficiency metrics, and management of the service database are consistent regardless of whether incidents are resolved by your corporate IT support staff, by Progent, or both. Learn more about Progent's outsourced/shared Service Desk services.

• Active Protection Against Ransomware: AI-based Ransomware Detection and Cleanup
  Progent's Active Protection Against Ransomware is an endpoint protection managed service that incorporates next generation behavior-based analysis tools to guard endpoints and servers and VMs against modern malware attacks like ransomware and email phishing, which easily get by traditional signature-matching AV products. Progent ASM services protect local and cloud resources and offers a unified platform to automate the complete malware attack lifecycle including blocking, identification, mitigation, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Key features include single-click rollback with Windows VSS and real-time system-wide immunization against new threats. Find out 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 makes it easy to create, maintain, retrieve and safeguard data related to your IT infrastructure, processes, business apps, and services. You can quickly locate passwords or serial numbers and be alerted about upcoming expirations of SSLs or warranties. By cleaning up and organizing your IT infrastructure documentation, you can eliminate as much as half of time spent looking for critical information about your IT network. ProSight IT Asset Management includes a common location for storing and collaborating on all documents related to managing your network infrastructure such as standard operating procedures and How-To's. ProSight IT Asset Management also offers a high level of automation for collecting and associating IT data. Whether you're planning enhancements, doing regular maintenance, or responding to a crisis, ProSight IT Asset Management gets you the information you require as soon as you need it. Read more about ProSight IT Asset Management service.

• Progent's Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services
  Progent's support services for patch management offer businesses of all sizes a versatile and cost-effective solution for evaluating, validating, scheduling, applying, and tracking updates to your ever-evolving IT network. Besides optimizing the protection and functionality of your computer environment, Progent's patch management services permit your in-house IT team to concentrate on more strategic projects and tasks that derive maximum business value from your network. Learn more about Progent's patch management services.

• ProSight Virtual Hosting: Hosted Virtual Machines at Progent's World-class Data Center
  With ProSight Virtual Hosting service, a small or mid-size business can have its critical 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. Under Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting service model, the customer owns the data, the operating system software, and the applications. Since the environment is virtualized, it can be ported immediately to a different hosting environment without a lengthy and technically risky configuration procedure. With ProSight Virtual Hosting, your business is not locked into a single hosting service. Learn 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 utilizes SentinelOne's next generation 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-matching anti-virus products. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards on-premises and cloud resources and provides a unified platform to address the complete threat progression including filtering, detection, mitigation, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Top capabilities include one-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic system-wide immunization against new attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Read more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) next-generation endpoint protection and ransomware defense.

• ProSight Enhanced Security Protection: Physical and Virtual Endpoint Protection and Microsoft Exchange Email Filtering
  Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection (ESP) managed services offer ultra-affordable multi-layer protection for physical servers and VMs, workstations, mobile devices, and Exchange Server. ProSight ESP uses contextual security and advanced machine learning for continuously monitoring and responding to cyber threats from all attack vectors. ProSight ESP offers firewall protection, penetration alarms, endpoint control, and web filtering via leading-edge technologies incorporated within one agent accessible from a unified console. Progent's data protection and virtualization consultants can help your business to plan and configure a ProSight ESP deployment that meets your organization's specific requirements and that allows you achieve and demonstrate compliance with government and industry data protection standards. Progent will help you define and configure policies that ProSight ESP will enforce, and Progent will monitor your IT environment and react to alerts that call for urgent action. Progent can also assist you to install and verify a backup and disaster recovery system such as ProSight Data Protection Services so you can recover rapidly from a destructive security attack like ransomware. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Enhanced Security Protection unified endpoint security and Microsoft Exchange email filtering.