Global Ransomware attack a wake-up call for organizations to secure access to critical systems
by William Culbert —
With organizations across the globe bracing themselves for a second
wave of ransomware attacks, the impact of Friday’s WannaCry attack is
still being counted. With over 150 countries impacted, this attack has
caused massive disruption for organisations including telecoms
companies, car manufacturers and in the UK, the NHS has been
significantly impacted with IT systems shut down and operations
cancelled.
This attack quickly proliferated across IT systems through an
identified vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. Microsoft said it had
released a security update in March to address this, but many
organizations were yet to run it(1). With IT teams working
throughout the weekend to shore up their security and increase defences
against further attacks, what can organizations do to stop ransomware
and malware attacks from propagating across their IT systems?
Shut down your vendor access method if you use VPNs and RDP:
This may sound drastic and it is, but if you want to stay in control
and secure you don’t really have a choice. With 100,000s of
organisations infected by this ransomware attack, how can you ensure
that your suppliers and outsourcers who have access to your network
don’t pose a risk to your organization? Immediately shutting down
insecure access paths into your IT infrastructure for third parties will
prevent the propagation of any malware. Bomgar’s Privileged Access solution can get you back up and running with your suppliers within hours, but this time securely.
Review policies and train employees regularly:
With the source of the WannaCry ransomware attack suspected to be
through a phishing attack, organizations need to ensure their employees
are regularly trained to identify and report suspected phishing
attempts. Bomgar’s recent Secure Access Threat Report
found that 61% of respondents were concerned that administrative or
privileged credentials will be phished from an employee and found that
only half (54%) of organizations conduct annual training to keep
insiders aware of security processes and, shockingly, only 53% include
this training as part of induction for new employees.
Manage and control privileged access to systems: Implementing
a policy of least privilege and controlling and managing privileged
access allows organizations to prevent any unauthorized access to IT
systems. Bomgar’s secure access solutions, built on our secure platform,
stop any unauthorized access attempts by breaking point to point access
paths and allows you to define who has access to what and when.
Quickly identify which systems need patches applying:
Utilize tools such as canned scripts to allow IT teams to quickly see
if systems are patched and up to date. Bomgar's canned scripts feature
can help you identify if your systems are patched to known
vulnerabilities with one click.
