Ransomware: Four Ways to Protect Data Now

It’s a nightmare scenario for any user or organization: in the middle of an ordinary day, your screen is taken over by an alert that your data has been encrypted and your computer’s essential functions have been locked down. You have two choices: pay a ransom — or accept that you’ll never see your data again, including any sensitive or regulated information they may contain (which, in turn, may well be leaked or sold to the highest bidder).
A countdown clock shows how little time you have left to make your decision. You may be able to determine later how it got to this point — a phishing email? An infected file or web page? An exploit kit? — but you’d do anything to have prevented it from happening in the first place. Fortunately, there are steps you can take now to lower the risk of ransomware, and to minimize its impact in the event of an attack.

Citrix solutions enable four highly effective measures for reducing your exposure to ransomware and keeping your apps and data accessible to authorized users — not hackers and their clients. Virtualization, enterprise mobility management and enterprise file synchronization make it possible to insulate computers, tablets, smartphones and other endpoints against ransomware infection, and to recover quickly in the event of a breach.

• Shield users of web apps from infection and keep sensitive data off the endpoint by  publishing virtualized, sand boxed and hardened browsers rather than relying on the locally installed, over-configured and over connected browser.
• Prevent email-borne ransomware from compromising the endpoint by publishing a virtualized, sand boxed and hardened email client.
• Protect mobile devices against attack with measures including containerization, encryption, blacklists and whitelists, and device compliance checks
• Ensure the rapid recovery of ransomware-encrypted data with a secure
and robust enterprise file sync and sharing service.

Data taken hostage—a crime that pays handsomely

Recent years have seen the Internet swarmed with more than 50 variants of ransomware with names like Locky, KeRanger, Cryptolocker, CryptoWall and TeslaCrypt. Initially targeting consumers, these scripts increasingly target victims with highly sensitive, high value data such as healthcare, banking, legal and finance organizations. Once activated by an unwitting user, the ransomware calls home to a command-and-control server to acquire a unique, randomly created AES encryption key, then applies it to critical files found on local, network and cloud-connected drives. At that point, this data is entirely under the control of the hacker, who demands the prompt payment of a ransom to recover it or prevent its disclosure. This amount may range from hundreds of dollars for individual consumers to many thousands for a business. Payments are often demanded in Bitcoin, further complicating a business response.

Four ways to kidnap-proof your data

1. Publish virtualized, sand boxed and hardened browsers

2. Publish a virtualized, sand boxed, and hardened email client

3. Protect mobile devices against attack with containerization

4. Provide a secure and robust enterprise data sync and sharing service

Proven protection

Citrix customers are already using these methods to avoid the damage and disruption of ransomware. One healthcare industry IT leader reports that he has already counteracted numerous ransomware attacks through the secure Citrix architecture in place. “We probably see at least one ransomware attack a week of some kind or another, and 99.99 percent of the time, we have been successful in containing that to just the workstation.” The organization simply swaps in a newly imaged hard drive for the workstation and restores its data from an enterprise file sync and sharing service, and work proceeds as usual. In this case, the users in question are doctors and other medical professionals for whom access to data can literally be a matter of life and death. The Citrix approach to ransomware protection keeps hackers from holding the organization and its patients hostage — so the delivery of care can continue.

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