The number of ransomware attacks continue to rise year on year. According to the Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigation Report there was a 13% increase in ransomware attacks and ransomware was involved in 25% of all breaches. Therefore, it is vital to know how to respond to a ransomware attack and be able to respond quickly.
When a company falls victim to a ransomware attack the natural response is to wipe the infected machine and restore the data in order to get up and running again as quickly as possible. As a result, attackers will often use ransomware as a way to destroy any evidence of a data breach after they have extracted the data from the network.
When companies become a victim of a ransomware attack we are often asked if we can decrypt the encrypted data. Although the answer will almost certainly be no, it is still important to conduct a thorough investigation.
The purpose of the investigation is to preserve potential evidence in order to:
- Identify how the system came to be infected with ransomware
- Identify if any confidential data has been extracted from the system
- Provide answers to the regulatory authorities and show you have taken reasonable steps to prevent a repeat
- Preserve the data in case decryption keys are released at a later date