Ransomware keeps growing in terms of impact and sophistication, and the brutality of those who wield it. In this real training for free ™ webinar I will show you how ransomware works, who is behind it, how it's deployed and how to defeat it. Specifically, we'll talk about crypto-ransomware which, after successfully infecting a system, encrypts the user's files and then displays a message demanding payment before the files will be decrypted.
CryptoLocker and Cryptowall were only the beginning of modern ransomware. Ransomware actually traces its roots back to the 80s. But it's where ransomware is today that matters. Today's ransomware writers are getting smarter not just in technical ways but also in terms of business (aka crime). I will show you how instead of writing the ransomware and distributing it to victims, handling the payment process and so on, ransomware authors are just writing the ransomware and then giving it away free to other criminals that distribute it to victims and handle the rest of the dirty work. The ransomware automatically sends a “cut” of the ransoms paid to the author. “Tox” was the first person to apparently think of this and although that enterprising teenager quit early on many more have followed in his footsteps.
I'll also show you how ransomware criminals cover their tracks and get away with the cash without being traced.
Some of the criminals have been caught. For instance, I'll discuss how 2 young criminals in the Netherlands were caught through cooperation of police and security researchers.
How do you combat ransomware? We will discuss 3 ways:
- User training
- Isolated backups (notice I'm not using the term “off-line” – tune in to find out why)
- Stopping malware with a defense-in-depth endpoint security strategy
I'll also show you some interesting tools from security researchers that in some cases can recover data that's been locked by some types of ransomware.
Also, I'll explain a disturbing tactic by ransomware criminals that makes isolated/offline backups much less of a viable control for mitigating the risk of ransomware. This is a bad thing and what it means is: at the end of the day you've got to stop unauthorized code from running on your endpoints.
That's the only thing that mitigates the risk. Therefore, I've asked HEAT Software (formerly Lumension) to sponsor this webinar and you will get a chance to see how their Endpoint Management and Security Suite comprehensively provides every endpoint security technology you need in a single agent and on one pane of glass.
Don't miss this real training for free ™ event. Please register now!