Combating the Escalating Threat of Ransomware Multi-Pronged Approach for Secure Organizations

Ransomware poses a significant threat to organizations and individuals, encrypting and locking data until a ransom is paid. This paper explores the detection and mitigation strategies for ransomware attacks, emphasizing the importance of human vigilance and incident response preparedness. The research highlights the attacker's reliance on user lack of awareness and the need for effective countermeasures based on open-source threat reporting and past exposure analysis. A phased approach to network recovery and system hardening is discussed, emphasizing the importance of vigilant monitoring post-attack. Key findings include the crucial role of CIRT methodology in containment and eradication, the value of network logs and disk artifacts in identifying the attack vector, and the importance of cross-referencing attack variants for faster attribution. The paper concludes by advocating for increased investment in user education and incidence response strategies to combat the evolving threat of ransomware.