In 2024, 65% of global financial organizations have experienced a ransomware attack, making it one of the most deeply affected industries. Banking institutions are heavily targeted by organized cybercriminals and ransomware demands due to their high value of data, deeply interconnected systems with third parties, and ability to pay the ransom.
Ransomware is one of the most frequent, damaging, and successful cybercrimes, and recovery is costly and time-consuming. For banking institutions, ransomware remediation is critical to rebuilding consumer trust, safeguarding sensitive information, and protecting against financial loss.
What is Ransomware?
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts or locks an organization’s files, applications, data, or infrastructure. The cybercriminal then demands a monetary payment (a ransom) in exchange for a decryption key to restore business access.
However, there is always the danger of paying an expensive ransom and still not recovering access.
Ransomware is highly lucrative, with the average ransom payment surging 500% within the past year to $2 million, making it a popular threat vector for cybercrime. Almost 63% of ransom demands were over $1 million, with 30% skyrocketing to over $5 million. However, some nefarious actors are content hunting many other vulnerable companies and settling for far less given the company size and lack of a defense. Regardless, the cost to a company is significant on the financial, reputational, and operational levels.
How Ransomware Remediation Works
If your business comes to a screeching halt because of ransomware, it's all hands on deck to return systems online and recover your business operations. The average ransom attack stops a company’s operations for roughly 21 days and costs an average of $5,600 per minute, thanks to losses in productivity, sales, and operations.
Ransomware remediation is a multi-step process that recovers your business from the existing incident and protects against future attacks.
Identification and Containment
Ransomware remediation starts with rapid incident detection that identifies the spreading infection through automated or human monitoring. The faster the incident is caught, the faster it's contained through defense systems like network segmentation. Incident detection systems (IDS) are the first line of defense after an attack, distinguishing between normal and abnormal activities.
Once the ransomware is halted, your internal security personnel or an expert cybersecurity consulting partner begins work on recovery and remediation. This could involve isolating affected systems, disconnecting them from the larger network, or implementing a short-term fix. Once the threat is isolated or entirely halted, recovery can begin.
Recovery
Proactive data backups make a world of difference in returning systems online. Your organization can potentially restore everything with a recent backup, but if not, you can start attempting decryption to recover files or begin communication with the attacker.
Investigation and Prevention
A critical component of ransomware remediation is a thorough postmortem investigation of the attack point and an understanding of how a vulnerability was exploited. The system should be proactively patched, and new security measures should be put in place to defend your critical infrastructure.
For banking institutions, data breaches must be reported to regulatory bodies, and your team can work on any potential fines or compliance consequences.
Benefits of Ransomware Remediation
With integrated risk management, your company can proactively protect the most vulnerable systems and holistically assess your entire security posture.
Minimized Business Downtime
Ransomware remediation technology and processes minimize business downtime and increase business continuity. Instead of ceasing operations for days, weeks, or months, an organization can get systems back online faster.
Critical Asset and Data Protection
Protect your most critical assets and sensitive data before ransomware even affects and locks this information. With ransomware remediation, you can potentially block attackers from even reaching sensitive credit card information, customer data, or private logins and passwords.
Strengthened Security
Overall, your entire security posture is strengthened, even after the devastation of a ransomware attack. Creating a thorough incident response policy for the future helps manage and mitigate any potential cybersecurity threat.
Advisory Services and Comprehensive Recovery Strategies with Vistrada
It's overwhelming and frightening to consider facing a ransomware attack alone. Fortunately, there are multiple options for modern-day businesses, depending on your goals, needs, and budget.
For example, comprehensive cybersecurity consulting can make strategic recommendations around adopting the latest defense technology or provide training for your internal teams. Cybersecurity programs can be built from the ground up to prevent, identify, protect, detect, and rapidly respond to any incident.
If your business needs more preventative, ad-hoc, or project-based security support, expert advisory services also proactively shore up defenses and work closely with your team in the worst-case scenario.
CISO as a service offerings provide cost-effective cybersecurity leadership and teams to ensure you have a proactive and preventative approach that allows you to address attacks, upcoming compliance assessments, audits, penetration testing, and overall policy development.
Whatever your cybersecurity needs, the experts at Vistrada are ready to support you with cost savings, improved compliance, proactive security, and rapid response. Reach out to Vistrada today for proactive ransomware consulting.
