Tag: ransomware

MGM Resorts Ransomware Attack: Disaster Recovery as a Malware Defense

This article was authored by me and posted on my company’s website. Please read the full article there.

MGM Resorts reported an active Ransomware incident starting on September 11th, and as of September 17th, it had not fully recovered. Rumors are that the company did not pay the ransom and is “recovering” its systems.

It makes you wonder, if a company like MGM Resorts, with all of its available resources, is struggling with a ransomware attack, what does that mean for the everyday company, not on its scale? After all, cyber criminals attack companies of all sizes.

I previously wrote about the concept of using the cloud to test and perfect your malware defenses. The main point is that the cloud could be a safe way to test your preventative measures in a live sandbox environment without the risk of actual contamination.

Why didn’t MGM switch to its Disaster Recovery (DR) system? You would think it would have a mirror of its production systems, and it could “switch over” in such events. Most DR systems are designed to switch over in minutes or hours, but not days or never. There are a few possibilities. One might be that its DR system was also impacted by the attack. The other is that its DR model likely did not include shared components essential to its overall operation, which seems unlikely.

Continue to the full article at this link.

The safest way to live test your ransomware, malware, virus defenses

You aren’t going to release a live virus on your production system, so how do you test your defenses?

In the article “The State of Ransomware in 2020“, research suggests that every 11 seconds, some business is being attacked by a cybercriminal. And in the report “The State of Ransomware 2021“, the frequency of attacks is up year over year along with the diversity of business types being attacked. Lower in the same report, you can see details from the various organizations being attacked.

Couple this with “Cybersecurity Talent Crunch to Create 350 Million Unfilled Jobs Globally by 2021,” and it is apparent that many companies will have to rely on existing worker talent to combat an ever-increasing threat. Of course, high-tech companies have high-tech talent, but what about all the other types of organizations like Government, Education, Service Industry, and Manufacturing. We all like to think we have skilled workers regardless of our industry. Still, under this new growing threat, our current in-house cybersecurity skills might not be at the level needed to provide maximum safeguard.

So what are we to do?

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