Tips for Dealing with the Ransomware Threat
While the below tips are primarily aimed at organizations and their employees, some are also applicable to individual users.
Prevention Efforts
- Make sure employees are aware of ransomware and of their critical roles in protecting the organization’s data.
- Patch operating system, software, and firmware on digital devices (which may be made easier through a centralized patch management system).
- Ensure antivirus and anti-malware solutions are set to automatically update and conduct regular scans.
- Manage the use of privileged accounts—no users should be assigned administrative access unless absolutely needed, and only use administrator accounts when necessary.
- Configure access controls, including file, directory, and network share permissions appropriately. If users only need read specific information, they don’t need write-access to those files or directories.
- Disable macro scripts from office files transmitted over e-mail.
- Implement software restriction policies or other controls to prevent programs from executing from common ransomware locations (e.g., temporary folders supporting popular Internet browsers, compression/decompression programs).
Business Continuity Efforts
- Back up data regularly and verify the integrity of those backups regularly.
- Secure your backups. Make sure they aren’t connected to the computers and networks they are backing up.