Protect Your Organization from Devastating Ransomware and Cyber Extortion Attacks Ransomware and other cyber extortion crimes have reached epidemic proportions. The secrecy surrounding them has left many organizations unprepared to respond. Your actions in the minutes, hours, days, and months after an attack may determine whether you'll ever recover. You must be ready. With this book, you will be. Ransomware and Cyber Extortion is the ultimate practical guide to surviving ransomware, exposure extortion, denial-of-service, and other forms of cyber extortion. Drawing heavily on their own unpublished case library, cyber security experts Sherri Davidoff, Matt Durrin, and Karen Sprenger guide you through responding faster, minimizing damage, investigating more effectively, expediting recovery, and preventing it from happening in the first place. Proven checklists help your security teams act swiftly and effectively together, throughout the entire lifecycle--whatever the attack and whatever the source. Understand different forms of cyber extortion and how they evolved Quickly recognize indicators of compromise Minimize losses with faster triage and containment Identify threats, scope attacks, and locate "patient zero" Initiate and manage a ransom negotiation--and avoid costly mistakes Decide whether to pay, how to perform due diligence, and understand risks Know how to pay a ransom demand while avoiding common pitfalls Reduce risks of data loss and reinfection Build a stronger, holistic cybersecurity program that reduces your risk of getting hacked This guide offers immediate value to everyone involved in prevention, response, planning, or policy: CIOs, CISOs, incident responders, investigators, negotiators, executives, legislators, regulators, law enforcement professionals, and others. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Avoid becoming the next ransomware victim by taking practical steps today Colonial Pipeline. CWT Global. Brenntag. Travelex. The list of ransomware victims is long, distinguished, and sophisticated. And it's growing longer every day. In Ransomware Protection Playbook, computer security veteran and expert penetration tester Roger A. Grimes delivers an actionable blueprint for organizations seeking a robust defense against one of the most insidious and destructive IT threats currently in the wild. You'll learn about concrete steps you can take now to protect yourself or your organization from ransomware attacks. In addition to walking you through the necessary technical preventative measures, this critical book will show you how to: Quickly detect an attack, limit the damage, and decide whether to pay the ransom Implement a pre-set game plan in the event of a game-changing security breach to help limit the reputational and financial damage Lay down a secure foundation of cybersecurity insurance and legal protection to mitigate the disruption to your life and business A must-read for cyber and information security professionals, privacy leaders, risk managers, and CTOs, Ransomware Protection Playbook is an irreplaceable and timely resource for anyone concerned about the security of their, or their organization's, data.

Your one-stop guide to know digital extortion and it's prevention. Key Features A complete guide to how ransomware works Build a security mechanism to prevent digital extortion. A practical approach to knowing about, and responding to, ransomware. Book Description Ransomware has turned out to be the most aggressive malware and has affected numerous organizations in the recent past. The current need is to have a defensive mechanism in place for workstations and servers under one organization. This book starts by explaining the basics of malware, specifically ransomware. The book provides some quick tips on malware analysis and how you can identify different kinds of malware. We will also take a look at different types of ransomware, and how it reaches your system, spreads in your organization, and hijacks your computer. We will then move on to how the ransom is paid and the negative effects of doing so. You will learn how to respond quickly to ransomware attacks and how to protect yourself. The book gives a brief overview of the internals of security software and Windows features that can be helpful in ransomware prevention for administrators. You will also look at practical use cases in each stage of the ransomware phenomenon. The book talks in detail about the latest ransomware attacks involving WannaCry, Petya, and BadRabbit. By the end of this book, you will have end-to-end knowledge of the trending malware in the tech industry at present. What you will learn Understand malware types and malware techniques with examples Obtain a quick malware analysis Understand ransomware techniques, their distribution, and their payment mechanism Case studies of famous ransomware attacks Discover detection technologies for complex malware and ransomware Configure security software to protect against ransomware Handle ransomware infections Who this book is for This book is targeted towards security administrator, security analysts, or any stakeholders in the security sector who want to learn about the most trending malware in the current market: ransomware.

The biggest online threat to businesses and consumers today is ransomware, a category of malware that can encrypt your computer files until you pay a ransom to unlock them. With this practical book, you’ll learn how easily ransomware infects your system and what steps you can take to stop the attack before it sets foot in the network. Security experts Allan Liska and Timothy Gallo explain how the success of these attacks has spawned not only several variants of ransomware, but also a litany of ever-changing ways they’re delivered to targets. You’ll learn pragmatic methods for responding quickly to a ransomware attack, as well as how to protect yourself from becoming infected in the first place. Learn how ransomware enters your system and encrypts your files Understand why ransomware use has grown, especially in recent years Examine the organizations behind ransomware and the victims they target Learn how wannabe hackers use Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) to launch campaigns Understand how ransom is paid—and the pros and cons of paying Use methods to protect your organization’s workstations and servers

Know how to mitigate and handle ransomware attacks via the essential cybersecurity training in this book so you can stop attacks before they happen. Learn the types of ransomware, distribution methods, internal structure, families (variants), defense strategies, recovery methods, and legal issues related to reporting ransomware incidents to authorities and other affected parties. This book also teaches you how to develop a ransomware incident response plan to minimize ransomware damage and recover normal operations quickly. Ransomware is a category of malware that can encrypt your computer and mobile device files until you pay a ransom to unlock them. Ransomware attacks are considered the most prevalent cybersecurity threats today—the number of new ransomware variants has grown 30-fold since 2015 and they currently account for roughly 40% of all spam messages. Attacks have increased in occurrence from one every 40 seconds to one every 14 seconds. Government and private corporations are targets. Despite the security controls set by organizations to protect their digital assets, ransomware is still dominating the world of security and will continue to do so in the future. Ransomware Revealed discusses the steps to follow if a ransomware infection occurs, such as how to pay the ransom through anonymous payment methods, perform a backup and restore your affected files, and search online to find a decryption tool to unlock (decrypt) your files for free. Mitigation steps are discussed in depth for both endpoint devices and network systems. What You Will Learn Be aware of how ransomware infects your system Comprehend ransomware components in simple terms Recognize the different types of ransomware familiesIdentify the attack vectors employed by ransomware to infect computer systemsKnow how to prevent ransomware attacks from successfully comprising your system and network (i.e., mitigation strategies) Know what to do if a successful ransomware infection takes place Understand how to pay the ransom as well as the pros and cons of paying Set up a ransomware response plan to recover from such attacks Who This Book Is For Those who do not specialize in the cybersecurity field (but have adequate IT skills) and want to fully understand the anatomy of ransomware threats. Although most of the book's content will be understood by ordinary computer users, it will also prove useful for experienced IT users aiming to understand the ins and outs of ransomware threats without diving deep into the technical jargon of the internal structure of ransomware.

Cybersecurity is undoubtedly one of the fastest-growing fields. However, there is an acute shortage of skilled workforce. The cybersecurity beginners guide aims at teaching security enthusiasts all about organizational digital assets’ security, give them an overview of how the field operates, applications of cybersecurity across sectors and industries, and skills and certifications one needs to build and scale up a career in this field.

Countering Cyber Sabotage: Introducing Consequence-Driven, Cyber-Informed Engineering (CCE) introduces a new methodology to help critical infrastructure owners, operators and their security practitioners make demonstrable improvements in securing their most important functions and processes. Current best practice approaches to cyber defense struggle to stop targeted attackers from creating potentially catastrophic results. From a national security perspective, it is not just the damage to the military, the economy, or essential critical infrastructure companies that is a concern. It is the cumulative, downstream effects from potential regional blackouts, military mission kills, transportation stoppages, water delivery or treatment issues, and so on. CCE is a validation that engineering first principles can be applied to the most important cybersecurity challenges and in so doing, protect organizations in ways current approaches do not. The most pressing threat is cyber-enabled sabotage, and CCE begins with the assumption that well-resourced, adaptive adversaries are already in and have been for some time, undetected and perhaps undetectable. Chapter 1 recaps the current and near-future states of digital technologies in critical infrastructure and the implications of our near-total dependence on them. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the origins of the methodology and set the stage for the more in-depth examination that follows. Chapter 4 describes how to prepare for an engagement, and chapters 5-8 address each of the four phases. The CCE phase chapters take the reader on a more granular walkthrough of the methodology with examples from the field, phase objectives, and the steps to take in each phase. Concluding chapter 9 covers training options and looks towards a future where these concepts are scaled more broadly.