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 Drawing heavily on their own unpublished case library, cyber security experts Sherri Davidoff, Matt Durrin, and Karen Sprenger guide you through responding faster, minimizing damage, investigating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.

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

Why cyberinsurance has not improved cybersecurity and what governments can do to make it a more effective tool for cyber risk management. As cybersecurity incidents—ranging from data breaches and denial-of-service attacks to computer fraud and ransomware—become more common, a cyberinsurance industry has emerged to provide coverage for any resulting liability, business interruption, extortion payments, regulatory fines, or repairs. In this book, Josephine Wolff offers the first comprehensive history of cyberinsurance, from the early “Internet Security Liability” policies in the late 1990s to the expansive coverage offered today. Drawing on legal records, government reports, cyberinsurance policies, and interviews with regulators and insurers, Wolff finds that cyberinsurance has not improved cybersecurity or reduced cyber risks. Wolff examines the development of cyberinsurance, comparing it to other insurance sectors, including car and flood insurance; explores legal disputes between insurers and policyholders about whether cyber-related losses were covered under policies designed for liability, crime, or property and casualty losses; and traces the trend toward standalone cyberinsurance policies and government efforts to regulate and promote the industry. Cyberinsurance, she argues, is ineffective at curbing cybersecurity losses because it normalizes the payment of online ransoms, whereas the goal of cybersecurity is the opposite—to disincentivize such payments to make ransomware less profitable. An industry built on modeling risk has found itself confronted by new technologies before the risks posed by those technologies can be fully understood.

Ransomware will cost companies around the world $20 billion in 2021. Prepare for, recognise and survive ransomware attacks with this essential guide which sets out clearly how ransomware works, to help business leaders better understand the strategic risks, and explores measures that can be put in place to protect the organisation.

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.

This taut, true thriller dives into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker--a woman known only as Alien. When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien was quickly drawn to the school's tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original "hacking." Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead and two others were arraigned. Alien's adventures were only just beginning. After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her cache of virtual weapons--and the trespassing and social engineering talents she had developed while "hacking" at MIT. The company tested its clients' security by every means possible--not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite. Alien now runs a boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world's biggest and most vulnerable institutions--banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft. In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, fast-paced treatment it deserves.

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.