(Sent to Deerwood Technology’s GUARDIAN Network Support®clients on Saturday, May 13th.)
Yesterday, a massive cyberattack spread globally in a only a matter of minutes.
Gizmodo: There’s a Massive Ransomware Attack Spreading Globally Right Now
CNN: Massive ransomware attack hits 99 countries
Time: Cyberattack That Crippled U.K. Hospitals Is Global
The initial attack was via email, through spam. These messages are typically fake invoices, job offers and other lures which are sent to random email addresses. Within the email is a .zip file and once clicked, that initiates the WannaCry infection.
The attack is then spread on internal networks with a worm which abuses SMB, a network file sharing protocol. Other aspects of the malware leverage file-less exploitation techniques, and the malware is morphing rapidly in the wild with over a dozen variants seen thus far.
GUARDIAN Managed Network
Clients with Unified Threat Management (UTM) features on your network firewall/router devices have gateway anti-virus and intrusion protection as a very important first line of defense.
GUARDIAN Managed Workstations and Servers
Computers and servers with Managed Endpoint Protection are also protected from this malware. The Advanced Active Protection feature of our service has been shown to be effective at stopping even previously-unknown strains of this threat.
Most of your servers and desktop/laptop computers have already had the Microsoft maintenance and patches applied for this particular vulnerability. This morning, Deerwood Technologies engineers completed a review of your computers and have manually pushed the patches to any computers that may have been powered down or off-network in recent weeks.
GUARDIAN Managed Backup
Business critical data on servers and workstations backed up both locally and in our secure, cloud datacenters provides yet another safeguard from ransomwarefile encryption.
While not infallible, these aspects of your GUARDIAN Network Support® work together effectively to provide business continuity protection for your and your customers’ data.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at your convenience.
Thank you for your business!
Jim Mayne