Defensive Measures Against Ransomware
Implementing basic cyber hygiene leads to a significant improvement in the ability of small businesses to fend off ransomware, according to this analysis by Tidal Cyber and the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA).
The report seeks to quantitatively demonstrate the importance of cyber hygiene – deployment of baseline cybersecurity controls and defensive countermeasures – for small businesses. The analysis is framed around ransomware, one of the most prominent cyber threats facing small businesses today. We take a data-driven approach to building a ransomware “threat profile” specific to small businesses, consisting of top relevant groups and their known attack methods. We then show how deploying baseline defenses directly in line with those top attack methods leads to a measurable improvement in security confidence for a representative small business environment.
In brief, implementing the cyber hygiene measures covered in the GCA Cybersecurity Toolkit for Small Business has a clear and substantial positive security impact: our analysis shows that implementing the measures would address (enable mitigation, detection, and/or response to) 72% of the most common ransomware techniques facing small businesses and 86% of the techniques that enable initial network access or that compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of data. We also outline steps organizations can take to further drive security improvements beyond baseline cyber hygiene.
Download the full report to learn more about the methodology used which lead to these conclusions.