WannaCry (aka WanaCrypt0r 2.0) recently forced more than 220,000 systems worldwide to shut down, and experts urge caution that the wave isn’t over yet. The worm is using Microsoft vulnerabilities to attack systems, and once infected it follows the typical Ransomware steps; a system is encrypted, held to ransom and within 48 hours money is payable via Bitcoin to get data decrypted or data is lost. Since these types of attack are categorized as polymorphic malware, meaning that the variants change almost daily, it’s making it much more difficult to detect. Did you know the latest antivirus in Kerio Control, the award-winning network security solution, can detect the known variations of the WannaCry ransomware? Now, more than ever before, the world is at risk of being held captive by ransomware. Being South African, our homes are fortresses, we attend anti-hijacking classes and spread tips on how to handle unpredictable situations but, up till now, we’ve not applied the same security to our data and online presence. Here are a few tips on how to increase your cyber defenses: • Ensure that your IT systems are regularly updated. • Removing or disabling unnecessary services and legacy protocols on your network to reduce the potential attack surface. Unless you have a very good reason not to, disable the SMBv1 protocol on your network, while also ensuring SMB cannot be directly accessed from the internet. • Rewriting all URLs to scan for unsafe content at time-of-click is the best approach to preventing inbound URL-based phishing. • Backup Data! It is critical that you regularly backup data. This will ensure that the ransomware cannot spread to backup files. Most importantly, ensure that your back-up window is long enough to go back before any infection begins. Did you know the latest antivirus in Kerio Control, the award-winning network security solution, can detect the known variations of the WannaCry ransomware?
