Essential Ransomware Prevention Strategies for SMBs

Ransomware often makes small-scale or small-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) the target of their attacks, as most of these are not well-equipped to tackle advanced cyber threats. Smaller businesses may lack strong defenses, which makes them vulnerable to such attacks. Since the attackers assume the security of SMBs is more likely to be compromised with ease, they may choose to launch their cyberattacks against the SMBs and hack into their sensitive information & data, locking the data and files and demanding ransom to unlock these private data important to the company they have targeted. But there is a way out of this, and you can significantly lower the chances of falling prey to hackers and their lethal cyberattacks that jeopardize not only your finances but also hinder your reputation in the market. There is a silver lining, though, and you can recover from such situations without spending a whole lot if you have the appropriate security measures in place.

Importance of Robust Backup & Disaster Recovery –

Your backup and disaster recovery plan may prove to be the difference maker in determining if you see a complete shutdown of operations or a successful full-scale recovery in the wake of a ransomware attack. However, it is also a fact that all ransomware backup strategies are not equal or similar. Data backup & restore usually serve as your last line of defense to tackle ransomware attacks. If hackers can still destroy or encrypt any of your backup data files with a cyberattack, it just means that simply keeping the copies of your files is not then an effective or sufficient solution.

Below are some best practices to create a resilient and effective disaster recovery & backup solution that would be helpful:

Putting the 3-2-1 Backup Rule in Motion

It implies maintaining three different copies of your sensitive or important data. Make sure you store them separately, with one of them off-site or unconnected from your network and the other 2 on distinct kinds of storage media (such as one on an external drive and another on the cloud). With this approach, the chance of all copies being compromised at once is very small

Using Immutable Backup

Immutable backups are unchangeable and read-only snapshots of your data. You cannot make any modifications to them or remove them, and they remain unchanged. Neither an administrator-privileged user nor even malicious software attempting to encrypt them would be able to modify them. When dealing with modern-day ransomware which targets backup files, this technique is quite effective

Plan Regular, Automated Backups of your File

Backing up your data regularly every day, for critical systems, can be extremely useful and reduces the amount of data that is lost in the instance of a cyberattack incident. Automation ensures more consistency and helps mitigate the risk of human error.

Perform Frequent Tests on your Data Recovery Proces

Backup of your data is truly purposeful if you know how to use or restore it quickly. To confirm that your backups are working perfectly for a possible data recovery from ransomware and to ensure your team is well-prepared for a situation when you need to perform backup operations, you must conduct regular recovery drills. This also helps identify any hidden issues along with giving you an idea of how much time the process may take if or when an emergency occurs.

These best practices help ensure you have a dependable safety net and peace of mind knowing your company is prepared to recover without having to pay a ransom or experience any costly downtime.

Need to implement top-level security measures that apply to several aspects of your infrastructure, and we will discuss them below:

Network & Endpoint Security

Hackers don’t just pop up and attack you out of nowhere; they systematically exploit and take advantage of the loopholes that could be present in your network or endpoints, such as unpatched servers, or in your laptops, printers, and smartphones. Therefore, your business devices and endpoint protection are extremely important.

SMBs must follow certain methods vigilantly to shield themselves against ransomware attacks. They need to –

Use the most advanced & upgraded antivirus software and EDR for instantly detecting and nullifying any ransomware attacks in real time.
Set up robust firewalls and constantly monitor data traffic over their network to spot any unusual patterns.
Apply manual or automated patch management to fix security vulnerabilities before they can be noticed and exploited by hackers.
Segment your network so that if any of your devices is compromised or falls victim to an attack, it does not go on to affect the other devices on the network.

In today’s cyber threat landscape, network security is a top necessity for SMBs and you must take the best safeguarding measures possible.

The Human Firewall: Employee Training & Awareness

Although several factors can result in a ransomware cyber-attack, in the vast majority of ransomware attacks in organizations, though, the main cause turns out to be employee negligence or error by one of the members of the company itself – often in the form of a click on a suspicious email link. Therefore, employee cybersecurity awareness training is essential.

Training for this should include:

Guidance on how the employees should approach or react to unexpected emails and prevent social engineering attacks.
Train your employees to be vigilant and fully aware of what they should and should not do with handling any requests, offers, or queries they receive via email.
Training that is focused on real-world threats – such as what kind of possible threat they might encounter in daily life scenarios in workplaces, with related examples shown to them, and how your staff can tackle them.

Access Control & Identity Protection –

The extent of an attack is determined by the access controls that your employees and company personnel have. The damage can be considerably minimized if you have restricted access privileges.

Considerations for access control strategies:

Use the least privilege access control principle, which means that your staff members should only have as much access as their role in the organization requires them to have for their jobs.
Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for your SMB so it is not easier to access for outsiders in case the credentials are lost or stolen.
Audit and remove outdated or unused accounts so you know the personnel that have access and how often their existing usage of files or assets is by routinely checking login attempts.

You can stop ransomware as well as other cyberattacks before they escalate with the MFA and other mentioned strategies and find patterns to identify suspicious activities in access controls, ensuring better protection.

Concluding Remarks –

Above, we discussed ransomware and other cyber threats that SMBs face today. We also discussed the tips the SMBs should follow to take on those threats head-on and safeguard their businesses against the damaging effects of all kinds of cyberattacks especially ransomware. It is our specialty at Synergy IT Solutions to assist SMBs in increasing their resilience against cyber threats, minimizing downtime, ensuring business continuity, and helping them stay on top in their specific industry. So, give us a call or email us any time to get more information about cyber threats and their Solutions. Contact Synergy IT Solutions now and get a free quote for your business needs from our experts.

Contact :

Synergy IT solutions Group

US : 167 Madison Ave Ste 205 #415, New York, NY 10016

Canada : 439 University Avenue, 5th Floor, Toronto, ON M5G 1Y8

US : +1(917) 688-2018

Canada : +1(905) 502-5955

Email :

info@synergyit.com

sales@synergyit.com

info@synergyit.ca

sales@synergyit.ca

Website : https://www.synergyit.ca/ , https://www.synergyit.com/

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