Disaster Recovery Journal Summer 2023

Anticipating the Ransomware Attack

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By GERMAN VARGAS

any highly regarded public and private organizations, theoretically prepared, have not escaped being victims of ransomware attacks. This can become a big problem for companies, since they can be attacked and generate operational interruption or paralysis, loss of productivity and income, damage to the brand, and contractual or regulatory breaches.

Ransomware attacks differ from other cybersecurity events where access may be surreptitiously gained to information such as intellectual property, credit card data, or personally identifiable information and later exfiltrated for monetization. Instead, ran somware threatens an immediate impact on business operations. During a ransomware event, organizations may be afforded little time to mitigate or remediate impact, restore systems, or com municate via necessary business, partner, and public relations channels. For this reason, it is especially critical for organizations to be prepared. This includes educating users of cyber systems, response teams, and business decision makers about the impor tance of – and processes and procedures for – preventing and han dling potential compromises before they occur.

Every year, records are broken on the number of attacks and economic losses generated by ransomware, with effects that can be truly catastrophic and possibly put the survival of organiza tions at risk.

30 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SUMMER 2023