Ransomware has more than doubled year over year,2 and attackers are targeting organizations of all sizes — no one is immune. They are increasingly employing more sophisticated attacks and defeating existing defenses. And now, there is the new threat of AI-powered ransomware attacks, which will increase the number of attacks that organizations face, as well as the rate of successful attacks.
1 Barracuda 2023 Ransomware Insights
2 Threat Spotlight: Reported ransomware attacks double as AI tactics take hold
HERE’S HOW THEY DO IT
Anatomy of a ransomware attack
They attack through email.
Attacks often start with a malicious phishing email intended to trick the recipient into disclosing login credentials. Attackers may also purchase stolen credentials on the dark web.
They attack your websites and apps.
Using stolen credentials or other means, attackers hit your websites and applications to access your business data. Once they have access to your sensitive data, they often exfiltrate the data to ask for additional funds to prevent it from being released publicly.
They encrypt your data.
With access to your data, the attackers encrypt your data so that you can’t access it. They then demand a ransom payment to unencrypt it.
Don’t be the next ransomware victim.
Protect your business in 3 steps.
Barracuda is uniquely qualified to protect your business from ransomware because we provide three steps that can help you defend against every stage of a ransomware attack — including the new, more sophisticated AI-powered attacks. We provide the email, network/application, and backup solutions required to defend your business against ransomware.
Protect user credentials from email attacks.
Block phishing attacks before they reach users’ inboxes.
Email attacks are becoming increasingly complex and dangerous. Attackers use social engineering tactics to bypass traditional email security and trick users into clicking malicious links or attachments and disclosing their login credentials. Barracuda Email Protection combines the traditional email gateway with AI-enabled phishing and account takeover protection to detect and stop these costly attacks.
Train users to recognize phishing attacks.
Your users are your last line of defense. Educate them about the latest email threats, and ensure they understand their fraudulent nature and know how to report them to your security teams. Barracuda security awareness training and phishing simulation provides all necessary tools to train your users to recognize and report phishing emails, which will prevent email fraud and data loss.
Respond faster to email threats.
Email attacks that evade email security and land in your users’ inboxes need to be addressed quickly to prevent damage and limit the spread of the attack. Barracuda’s incident response automates post-delivery remediation, enables proactive threat discovery, and streamlines remediation of unwanted emails directly from all affected user inboxes. This automated process can help you to address post-delivery threats in minutes rather than hours or days.
Protect applications and access.
Ransomware attacks target your data for encryption and exfiltration. Web applications are the top attack vector for data breaches. Over 60% of data breaches resulted from hacking of web applications.3 To implement an effective ransomware protection strategy, you need to secure your applications and protect access to your environment.
Protect your web applications.
Web applications such as web forms, e-commerce sites, customer service portals, and partner portals are targets for bad actors and malicious bots. Applications often have vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain access to your data or to penetrate your network. These attacks may use credentials obtained through social engineering attacks or purchased on the dark web. Barracuda provides powerful, comprehensive application security that is easy to deploy.
Protect access to your applications.
Attackers have learned that acquiring credentials can fast-track access to your environment. To safeguard your organization, it’s more important than ever to make sure that people are who they say they are. You can provide the next level of protection with Zero Trust Access by having credentials tied to authorized devices so that attackers that only have the credentials and passwords are denied access. In addition, you can restrict user access to the applications and data authorized specifically for that user, which minimizes the attack surface.
For even more protection, Barracuda SecureEdge platform protects your entire network infrastructure, providing powerful capabilities to securely connect all users and devices.
Protect your data with secure backup.
If ransomware does take control of your data, there’s no need to pay a ransom or go through a difficult and tedious recovery process — if you have a strong, modern, easy-to-use backup solution. Barracuda offers superior backup solutions — on premises or in the cloud — that make it simple and fast to restore an up-to-date copy of any file, whether you’re restoring an entire server or specifically selecting files to restore.
Keep your backups safe from attackers.
The FBI’s top ransomware recommendation is to have a good backup of your important data. The reason? It’s the only way to recover without paying a ransom. Attackers know this too and want to find your backup systems and encrypt them so you can’t use your backups to recover. Barracuda’s backup solution offers security measures such as restricted IP access and a hardened Linux platform to help ensure that you always have a good backup to restore from.
Protect your data wherever it resides.
Consider all the data that you need to run your business. You need to back up all of it whether it is on-premises data or in the cloud — everything can be a ransomware target, including Microsoft 365. Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup can protect your Microsoft 365 data, while Barracuda Backup protects your onsite data. Both solutions offer advanced security with features such as immutable data, delayed purge, and multiple levels of access control.
Prevent data theft.
Attackers want to steal your important data, exfiltrate it, and then demand payment for the return of that data. Backups are a prime target as all the important data is in one place. Barracuda encrypts the data at rest, in transit, and in the secondary location so that attackers can’t read the data, making it much less valuable to them.
Don’t wait to get protected.
The best time to fight ransomware is before it strikes. Barracuda’s three steps to ransomware protection provide the solutions essential to securing your business from critical attack vectors. We can walk you through the steps and help you build a ransomware protection plan.
Featured Resources
Ransomware in the Age of AI
New insights about the current ransomware threat landscape
2023 Ransomware Insights
The prevalence and impact of ransomware attacks around the world
Ransomware Protection Checklist
Use this checklist to develop an effective ransomware protection plan
