The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) are releasing a joint Ransomware Guide meant to be a one-stop resource for stakeholders on how to be proactive and prevent these attacks from happening and also a detailed approach on how to respond to an attack and best resolve the cyber incident. CISA and MS-ISAC observed there are vast products and resources available, but very few that have them all in one place.

This one-stop guide is divided into two parts:

First, the guide focuses on best practices for ransomware prevention, detailing practices that organizations should continuously do to help manage the risk posed by ransomware and other cyber threats. It is intended to enable forward-leaning actions to successfully thwart and confront malicious cyber activity associated with ransomware. Some of the several CISA and MS-ISAC preventive services that are listed are Malicious Domain Blocking and Reporting, regional CISA Cybersecurity Advisors, Phishing Campaign Assessment, and MS-ISAC Security Primers on ransomware variants such as Ryuk.

The second part of this guide, response best practices and services, is divided up into three sections: (1) Detection and Analysis, (2) Containment and Eradication, and (3) Recovery and Post-Incident Activity. One of the unique aspects that will significantly help an organization’s leadership as well as IT professional with response is a comprehensive, step-by-step checklist. With many technical details on response actions and lists of CISA and MS-ISAC services available to the incident response team, this part of the guide can enable a methodical, measured and properly managed approach.  

“It is a CISA priority to help our partners defend against ransomware, advise them on appropriate risk-management actions and provide best practices for a resilient, responsible incident response plan in the event of an cyberattack,” said Bryan Ware, Assistant Director for Cybersecurity, CISA. “The collaborative and consistent engagement with our industry and government partners support our concerted efforts to offer trusted, proactive and timely resources and services. This guide is based on operational insight from CISA and MS-ISAC and our engagements with varied sector partners.”

Recent events stress the important reminder that ransomware can happen at any time to any organizations, so we encourage all organizations with sensitive or important data stored on their network to take steps now to protect it, including backing up data, training employees, and patching systems to blunt the potential impact of ransomware. Malicious actors have adjusted their ransomware tactics over time to include pressuring victims for payment by threatening to release stolen data if they refuse to pay and publicly naming and shaming victims as secondary forms of extortion.

One of the ways this guide can help is with identifying their critical data. It’s hard to have an organization determine after-the-fact what critical data was impacted by a ransomware incident if they did not have that understanding of what critical data they had ahead of time. And, it is hard to revert to backups if an organization does not have or has not properly maintained and tested their backups.

This joint ransomware guide is written primarily for the IT professional, but every level of an organization can benefit from reviewing it. CISA and MS-ISAC are proud to provide this guide that can help them plan for a ransomware incident and understand the risk management, analytical, and response services available to them.