Book Image

Incident Response Techniques for Ransomware Attacks

Book Image

Incident Response Techniques for Ransomware Attacks

Overview of this book

Ransomware attacks have become the strongest and most persistent threat for many companies around the globe. Building an effective incident response plan to prevent a ransomware attack is crucial and may help you avoid heavy losses. Incident Response Techniques for Ransomware Attacks is designed to help you do just that. This book starts by discussing the history of ransomware, showing you how the threat landscape has changed over the years, while also covering the process of incident response in detail. You’ll then learn how to collect and produce ransomware-related cyber threat intelligence and look at threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures. Next, the book focuses on various forensic artifacts in order to reconstruct each stage of a human-operated ransomware attack life cycle. In the concluding chapters, you’ll get to grips with various kill chains and discover a new one: the Unified Ransomware Kill Chain. By the end of this ransomware book, you’ll be equipped with the skills you need to build an incident response strategy for all ransomware attacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with a Modern Ransomware Attack
5
Section 2: Know Your Adversary: How Ransomware Gangs Operate
9
Section 3: Practical Incident Response

Preparation for an incident

Preparation is a vital part of the incident response process. And it's not only about the team. It's also about the impacted IT infrastructure. Just imagine you are responding to a ransomware-related incident, but all you have is a fully encrypted infrastructure with only default logging enabled and barely functioning antivirus software. Sounds surreal? But it's true for many incidents I have investigated during my career. Usually, companies don't think about their security until they are impacted.

Another important point is understanding that your infrastructure has lack of security controls and people. You don't need to wait for a real incident; in many cases, just a simple penetration testing assessment may show you are not well protected.

Some companies don't start to think about security even after a successful ransomware attack. And I have a good example – an Australian transportation and logistics company...