Cyber attacks have been on the rise for the past several years and are expected to cost more than $13.82 trillion by 2028. Ransomware attacks in particular have become increasingly sophisticated, especially with the use of AI. Scammers can now use breached data in targeted spear phishing attacks, where highly personalized information is used to gain access to medical or financial information.
8 Actions to Protect Your Company Against Ransomware Attacks
- Use a compliance solution.
- Conduct regular penetration tests and security assessments.
- Third-party risk management.
- Adopt automation and AI.
- Keep humans in the loop with AI tools.
- Incorporate cybersecurity into the company culture.
- Teach employees to use company technology responsibly.
- Rely on authoritative bodies for guidance.
Fintech, healthtech and software-as-a-service (SaaS) organizations are particularly at risk when it comes to these kinds of attacks. Not only do they hold and exchange large sums of money, they also store and process highly sensitive and private information of their customers. With the use of AI, phishing attacks can be easily and inexpensively executed on a large scale, increasing the probability of success for cybercriminals targeting these industries.
But the good news is that there are many actions companies can take right now to strengthen their security posture and protect themselves and their customers from the most sophisticated cyber attacks.
How to Protect Your Company Against Ransomware
1. Use a Compliance Solution
One of the best defenses against cyber attacks is ensuring your company is compliant with the most up-to-date regulatory guidelines and industry standards like ISO 27001:2022, PCI DSS 4.0.1 and NIST CSF 2.0. These frameworks can help you establish strong internal security controls and sustainable security processes that reduce the likelihood of cyber attacks. For example, compliance activities like risk assessments and security awareness training help keep organizations aware of critical business risks, identify redundancies in their software and procedures and ensure their staff is properly trained to protect sensitive information.
Compliance automation can significantly accelerate the tasks required to build and maintain a strong security and compliance posture such as evidence collection, centralizing compliance data, and monitoring security controls. Many compliance automation tools also flag vulnerabilities and failing controls, enabling proactive remediation and maintaining a robust security posture.
2. Conduct Regular Penetration Tests and Security Assessments
Regular penetration testing and security assessments can simulate the tactics used by real-world attackers. Conducting these exercises regularly will uncover weaknesses in infrastructure, applications and the human factors that attackers could exploit, which allows security teams to identify and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
Pen testing and security assessments also test your company’s incident response capabilities, ensuring that teams are prepared to quickly and effectively address social engineering attacks and other security incidents. After each exercise is complete, the results can be used to tailor future security training to the specific vulnerabilities and tactics that could be used against the organization.
3. Third-Party Risk Management
It’s incredibly important to manage the risk for every vendor you work with. In a study by riskrecon, 54 percent of organizations reported experiencing a data breach caused by one of their third party vendors in the last 12 months. Due diligence, continuous monitoring and vendor management policies can all help ensure your vendors are complying with strict cybersecurity standards.
In a due diligence assessment, you should ask potential vendors about their encryption practices or use of an intrusion detection system (IDS) to better understand their network security practices. And asking about client off-boarding processes can help you understand how your data will be disposed of once the vendor relationship ends. Once assessments are complete, you should rank vendors based on how critical their services are and the sensitivity of the data they handle so you can use more control with high-risk vendors.
Vendor management policies also help ensure your vendors are aligned with your organization’s security requirements, risk tolerance, and compliance obligations. Vendor contracts should include specific evaluation criteria, security requirements, incident reporting protocols, and compliance obligations.
4. Adopt Automation and AI
Just as AI can be used in social engineering attacks, it can also be used to protect against them. Organizations that use security AI and automation extensively were able to identify and contain a data breach 108 days faster and saw cost savings of nearly $1.8 million compared to companies that do not use this technology for security at all.
AI can analyze emails to identify phishing attempts, comparing them against data sets of known phishing emails to detect subtle patterns that may go unnoticed by a human. AI-powered systems can also monitor user behavior to identify social engineering attacks in progress, such as unusual login times or locations. And AI can help customize security awareness training to individual users based on their role, behavior and past interactions with potential threats, making security training more effective.
5. Keep Humans in the Loop With AI Tools
One of the biggest misconceptions many people have about cybersecurity and the compliance process is that it can be entirely automated. Yes, you can automate much of the evidence collection, policy management and other tasks required by a framework, but security threats are extremely complex, which means a security expert must be involved.
When it comes to defending against security threats, human auditors are your most valuable resource. Your security team brings contextual understanding to incidents because they understand the significance of events based on the organization’s infrastructure, business processes, and threat history. You should always have a security team checking the work of any automated solution.
6. Incorporate Cybersecurity into the Company Culture
In addition to technological solutions, defending against cyber attacks requires a culture of vigilance. Every employee must be an informed and active participant in the company’s security. Your organization should be extremely diligent when it comes to employees onboarding and offboarding. Comprehensive background checks, role-based access controls and periodic review and acceptance of company policies are just a few of the processes that should be in place to prevent cyber attacks that take advantage of employee vulnerabilities.
Compliance automation tools can also help with this. For example, Wealth.com created an easier security process and policy onboarding for all new employees, which increased productivity, trust with their customers, and overall ROI.
7. Teach Employees to Use Company Technology Responsibly
A recent study by Cyberhaven found that 11 percent of the data employees paste into ChatGPT is confidential. I believe it’s the responsibility of security teams to teach employees to use all company tools responsibly.
Security teams should also play a pivotal role in evaluating and implementing any new tool from a security and data privacy perspective. For example, security teams can ensure that any data shared with a tool is anonymized, or verify that data won’t be shared with any fourth-parties, which could potentially violate data privacy laws. It’s important that these experts are involved throughout the entire vendor selection process, not just brought in at the end or during onboarding.
8. Rely on Authoritative Bodies for Guidance
As more complex tools like AI are increasingly being used in cybersecurity development, authoritative bodies like NIST, CISA, OWASP and ISO 42001 are publishing resources to help developers manage the risks of AI and automation while also leveraging the benefits. These resources are designed to help organizations of all sizes and sectors effectively manage the risks associated with AI technologies.
By being proactive about cybersecurity and ensuring that both humans and technology are part of your defense plan, your business can protect its data and preserve customer trust, no matter how sophisticated cyber attacks become.
