PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE

“ The first is the age of the modular downloader . These downloader malware samples essentially get on a machine and then they download second , third and later stage payloads , meaning that the threat actor can make a decision about what is actually put on that machine in the end .

“ Something you ’ ve all been hearing a lot about is , of course , ransomware . What we ’ ve noticed is that these operator control downloaders are typically the delivery vehicle for ransomware when the threat actor makes the decision that ransomware is the right choice .”

Most detrimental types of malware for enterprises

“ It really depends on what your operations look like day-to-day – a banking trojan which steals money out of a bank account may be really devastating for some businesses if they operate on a really tight cash flow , whereas if there is ransomware on a few machines they might be able to turn those around quickly ,” DeGrippo said .

However , ransomware in large-scale deployment has been ‘ absolutely devastating ’ for organisations . Historically , ransomware would be on one machine and , while inconvenient , could generally be taken care of the by the IT team .

“ The new ransomware landscape is about a much more deliberate and strategic approach , where the threat actors are looking to ransom an entire company , their entire business operations and shut that whole organisation down at once in order to get a much larger ransom payment ,” said DeGrippo .

“ We used to see US $ 100 to US $ 800 for ransoms , now we ’ re seeing ransoms in the millions because what they ’ re able to ransom is no longer just files , but an entire company ’ s ability to operate .”

How successful threat actors are in obtaining these ransoms

“ Typically in my line of work , we look to stop these things before they ever get to those end-users but from what I have seen in the media , it does appear that a lot of the very sophisticated ransomware actors are able to extract a decent amount of the ransoms that they deploy ,” said DeGrippo .

However , there is question around the culpability of an organisation that pays a ransom due to various international laws . Organisations need to ensure they have a plan for how they will deal with incidents and ransomware in a pandemic .

“ We don ’ t just want an incident response plan , we want an incident response plan for the usual things , plus ransomware , plus a pandemic . I don ’ t think a lot of organisations are prepared that way so they need to work on that today .”

Best practice advice for incident response

DeGrippo highlights that the best practice advice for incident response is for organisations to understand their people and their processes , because the threat actors will know them just as well as the business itself .

“ It ’ s important to deeply understand those . In addition to that , what ’ s really important for organisations to think about is , ‘ hey , we ’ re not operating in our traditional world anymore . That IT helpdesk is not down on the third floor the way they used to be . Our users are now spread out at their homes and

they ’ re competing for Internet with their kids or their spouse ’.

“ It ’ s a much different reality to the way that we have to respond to incidents today than we did a year ago and updating those plans now , if an organisation hasn ’ t already , is the most important thing .”

Creating a robust cyberdefence strategy to protect against these types of malware attacks

“ I really still believe in the best practices that you learn from all of those foundational concepts in information security like defence in depth , having strong patch management and really building an information security programme ,” said DeGrippo .

“ You can ’ t write a plan , put a book in a drawer and then never think about

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