Despite the new sheen of professionalism, the rise of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) has only increased the danger posed by ransomware. Competition in the lucrative market has made ransomware affordable and ubiquitous. Specialization and fragmentation means even criminals without advanced programming skills can be the “hands on the keyboard” for sophisticated assaults on organizations.

Defending against this business-minded approach to ransomware is difficult, but not impossible. The paper covers how an IT team can avert negative organizational outcomes, including business interruption, data loss and business impact.

Key takeaways:

• Insight into the advancement of social tactics (including publication of victims details) and other forms of extortion to force ransom payments
• Why the only viable defenses must now be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms
• How data science can yield the earliest possible indicators of compromise through analysis of telemetry at scale