How Top Cyber Security Teams Neutralize Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware and embedded malware create havoc for organizations across industries and countries. Weaponized documents disguised as innocently appearing invoices, resumes, and shipping forms are being delivered through personalized phishing campaigns intended to evade anti-virus and virtual sandbox detection. Once ransomware enters a network, infected files are spread amongst internal users and partnering organizations when synced with cloud storage and collaboration apps. In result, blocking access to an organization’s system until a ransom is paid to a cybercriminal or criminal organization. Sophisticated attacks continue to become more complex and harder to detect.

In May 2021, a ransomware attack made global news with the five-day shutdown of the US Colonial Pipeline – a major artery for fuel along the East Coast. Worried their systems could be further compromised, Colonial Pipeline ceased distribution causing a panic among motorists. Colonial Pipeline’s decision to shut down operations perpetrated many aftereffects including limited operations of mass transit and refineries with ample product and no way to distribute. After paying millions in crypto currency to get their data back, they had to begin the process of decrypting their data.

The attack globally exposed the ease at which cybercriminals were able to cause so much chaos in institutions that many did not see as easily infiltrated. The financial and reputable damage far outweighs the preventable costs.

What can organizations do to stop ransomware attacks?

While organizations cannot stop ransomware attacks from happening, they can control how they protect themselves from these sophisticated attacks. Top cybersecurity teams and international authorities have turned to Clearswift for an enhanced layer of content inspection and sanitization that immediately neutralizes an attack. Real-time detection and removal of ransomware payloads ensures targeted phishing attempts are removed without delaying email delivery, employee collaboration, and business operations.

Advanced Threat Protection from Clearswift protects against ransomware attacks 

• Deep content inspection completely dissembles digital activity to its lowest basic parts for detection and immediate removal of malicious code - versus trying.match signatures or monitor the behavior of zero-hour and morphing attack methods. Deep content inspection is not evaded due to size, multiple levels of encapsulated files, virtual machine awareness techniques, or morphing.  
• Sanitization without delay removes only malicious content, allowing the rest of the message or digital transaction to continue unhindered. Eliminating delays up to 30 minutes due to behavior analysis.
   
• Signature-less detection protects against attacks with programmed guidelines. Unlike the popular signature-based detection which uses previous attacks to identify threats, Clearswift protects against today’s leading malware and tomorrow’s even more sophisticated variants by understanding how the system is behaving. It will notice bad behavior such as deleting files from operating system directory, attempting to stop anti-virus software, trying to write to the Windows registry, or aiming to download and execute files. With new malware samples increasing every day, signature-less detection is crucial in rapid protection.
   
• Eliminate high rates of false positives and negatives often found with traditional signature matching and virtual analysis. Clearswift understands both content and context and adapts its behavior accordingly. The user is alerted to the fact that a policy violation occurred, and the appropriate remedial action is taken, but business is not interrupted.
   
• Prevent metadata harvesting which gathers metadata and personal information from organizations’ websites, social media, email communications and cloud collaboration sites that lead to initial phishing and social engineering attacks.    

Proving to be the most effective defense that can be immediately added to existing security infrastructure (no rip and replace), Clearswift Advanced Threat Protection is how the top cybersecurity teams, defense organizations and authorities around the world are neutralizing ransomware attacks.