Ransomware is on the rise — and it’s not just an IT problem anymore. Therefore, it’s essential to develop a united front across your organisation to prepare for this threat.

Read through our guide to find out steps your business can take from within to ensure that you’re optimally prepared in the event of an attack.

Step one: Set up an in-house ransomware response team

To ensure long-term success, it’s essential for the team to meet at regularly scheduled intervals. Furthermore, stakeholders from each department within the organisation should be included to ensure that everyone is one the same page. Finally, the team should report to board level and maintain this communication to ensure accountability.

Step two: Run through your business processes and systems as a team

The assessment of these processes and systems begins with understanding where the organisation’s data is located as well as how it’s secured. Then, the team should decide together which ones the business can and can’t live without and subsequently prioritising them by importance.

Step three: Understand application, data and physical dependency

Here are a few questions the team can ask to get going with this step:

If the finance system is down – how do you invoice customers?
Are your manufacturing systems running on old computers?
Can you access sites if a keyless entry system is down?

Step four: Think outside your business

There are some measures that probably can’t be addressed by your organisation on its own, even if you’re well prepared. These might include:

Who do you call in the event of an issue?
Do you have security partners?
Do you have an external IaaS provider?
How will your staff connect to a recovery environment?
Do you have ransomware insurance?

Step five: Find the right partner

When the team asks itself the questions raised in step four, it will likely become apparent that the organisation will require outside support. Building a relationship with a partner before an attack happens is crucial to ensuring that you have a course of action planned if one occurs.

Proact is an ideal protection partner. As part of our broad security offering, we can provide:

Security expertise to advise on protection and help if your organisation is hit by an attack
IaaS platforms ready for your use
Site-to-site VPNs for users to work from home

Proact is your partner in protection. Find out more about how we work to protect and secure your data here, or get in touch with us at info@proact.eu.