Need Help for WannaCry Ransomware ?

Need Help For WannaCry Ransomware?

WannaCRY Ransomware attack is currently impacting organizations and businesses worldwide. This alert is directed to everyone in your organization and is sent to you an effort to raise awareness about this malware. Once affected it will and can cause significant downtime, affect your organization`s ability to serve customers, and may potentially result in financial harm.

Here is brief introduction of it.

What is WannaCry Ransomware?

WannaCry Ransomware is a virus (malware) that has the ability to secretly load on your computer systems, it locks files, usually by encrypting them. it is usually delivered via email attachments or via spoofed websites that are well crafted to makes a person believe that the mail and either a link or attached file is from trusted source.

Clicking on the link in email causes the malicious software to load on your computer system and starts encrypting files like databases, word, and Excel files.

With this encryption, your files will be locked, and you will not be able open them. the only way to unlock the files is to pay the Hackers a ransom.  In some cases, they don’t unlock files even after payment.   There is no way to bypass the encryption. We don’t recommend that a ransom is paid. Once paid you to become the ongoing target of these criminals who are there to extort money.

With proper precautions and following best practices, you can significantly reduce the risk of being affected and can also recover from an attack.

Below are recommendations on how to protect your system from these attacks.

You must educate staff on how to identify suspicious emails.

• Educate your employees to detect phishing emails.  Instruct them to check sender of the email and always verify their legitimacy before opening any email.
• Your employees should be reminded to not to visit the untrusted website or follow the links that are provided in the emails by untrusted sources.
• Remind your employees to be cautious when clicking on links in emails from trusted sources.

Implement Systemic Computer and Network security.

• You must have a systematic mechanism in place to keep your computer, data, and network in place.
• In case of an attack Block IP traffic at your network perimeter devices (contact us if you need assistance in blocking a list of IP addresses)
• Make sure up-to-date enterprise edition of Antivirus is installed on your computers
• If you don’t have enterprise edition of Antivirus installed on your computer systems, please give us call, and we will be happy to assist you.
• You must also install Antimalware software in addition to Antivirus software.

   Always Backup your data with some frequency

Backup is important; never forget to protect your business critical data with onsite and cloud backup solutions.  In case your computer systems are infected

• Remediate the infection via Antivirus and Antimalware.
• Following the remediated process, restore any encrypted files from backup or system restore points and volume shadow copies.

At Whitehats we offer industry leading backup solutions, if you think you are vulnerable to attack, please don’t hesitate to call us for a free assessment.

If you suspect that your computer has been infected by WannaCry Ransomware virus, please disconnect it from your network by removing the network cables from it and give us a call as soon as possible to minimize the loss of information for your company.