On Tuesday June 8th, iConstituent, a technology vendor used by dozens of House offices on Capitol Hill, became the latest high-profile victim of a ransomware attack. This crippling cyberattack on the constituent-outreach company comes on the heels of successful ransomware campaigns against a major U.S. pipeline system, Colonial Pipeline, the world’s largest meat supplier JBS, and electronics giant Acer.
2021 has been a banner year for ransomware as cybercriminals record success upon success against some of the world’s largest corporations on a near-monthly basis.
The recent deluge of cyberattacks has drawn a line between secure organizations and those gambling on the hopes that threat groups will overlook them. I believe gambling makes little sense when the cost of a ransomware attack can far exceed the price of an effective cybersecurity platform. Recovering from a ransomware attack in 2021 costs an average of $1.98 million USD, according to a recent cybersecurity study reported by Forbes, and it’s worth noting that most insurance companies don’t cover cyberattacks. This staggering figure does not account for the damage an organization’s brand suffers or the trust they lose with their clients.
When it comes to the ransom itself, there’s also the thorny question of “to pay or not to pay.” When business-critical data is at stake and daily operations are crippled, many organizations choose what they may see as the path of least resistance and pay the ransom to regain access to their systems and data. But this has the unfortunate effect of encouraging ransomware operators to strike again, often hitting the same company multiple times using insider data such as usernames and passwords harvested during a prior attack.
And buyer beware: paying the ransom is no guarantee that you’ll get anything in return, nor does it prevent cybercriminals from doing whatever they please with your exfiltrated confidential business data. Past victims have experienced every nightmare scenario from seeing their internal emails posted publicly, to having client data exposed on the dark web, to having proprietary secrets sold to competitors.
Fortunately, securing organizations against these types of threats is what BlackBerry was built for. BlackBerry offers a range of cybersecurity solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that both predict and prevent cyberattacks, helping organizations become more resilient to ransomware, including those used in the aforementioned attacks such as REvil, Avaddon and DarkSide.
BlackBerry® endpoint protection products such as BlackBerry® Protect use our 7th generation Cylance AI engine, trained on a threat dataset numbering in the billions, to identify and stop cyberattacks before they begin. Our solutions neutralize ransomware before the execution stage, preventing ransomware from detonating and infecting your endpoints and your network. By detecting and stopping attacks before they execute, BlackBerry products mitigate risks from known, unknown, and zero-day threats.
And with our newest additions to our cybersecurity arsenal, BlackBerry® Optics 3.0 and BlackBerry® Gateway, we are aggressively pursuing our Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vision where telemetry from a number of security sensors across endpoints and Zero-Trust Network Access (ZNTA) comes together in never-before-seen ways of combating cyber threats.
BlackBerry’s mission is to deliver intelligent security, everywhere. Our cybersecurity solutions save your organization time and money at the most critical juncture of a cyberattack – before ransomware executes and wreaks havoc.
BlackBerry Assistance
If you’re battling ransomware or a similar threat, we’re here to help, regardless of your existing BlackBerry relationship.
Our BlackBerry Incident Response team is made up of world-class security experts dedicated to cyber threat response and containment services for a wide range of incidents, including ransomware and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks.
We have a global security expert team standing by to assist you providing around-the-clock support wherever you need it. Please contact us here: https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/forms/cylance/handraiser/emergency-incident-response-containment
To learn more about how BlackBerry can protect your organization from ransomware and other cyberattacks, visit us at BlackBerry.com.
