The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a new tool to help organizations assess how proficiently they are equipped to safeguard against and recover after a ransomware attack.
The threat caused by ransomware has drastically gone up in the past year. Based on the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, ransomware is used in 10% of cyber attacks today. The SonicWall report says that ransomware attacks had expanded globally by 62% since 2019 and had a 158% increase in North America. BlackFog estimates that losses as a result of ransomware attacks will be approximately $6 trillion by 2021. In 2015, it was only $3 trillion.
CISA included the Ransomware Readiness Assessment (RRA) audit module in its Cyber Security Evaluation Tool (CSET). Using the desktop application CSET, network defenders are led through a detailed process of assessing their cybersecurity strategies for their information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) networks. CSET may be employed to carry out a complete analysis of a firm’s cybersecurity posture using set government and industry criteria and recommendations.
The RRA can be used to examine cybersecurity protection notably linked to ransomware. CISA claims the RRA tool was developed for organizations having varying degrees of cybersecurity maturity and will allow network defenders to look at their protection versus known criteria and best practice information in a structured, disciplined, and repeatable way.
The RRA aids asset owners and operators go through a detailed procedure to examine cybersecurity practices compared to ransomware dangers and give an analysis dashboard having charts and tables that show the results of the assessment, in summarized and particular formatting.
The RRA tool may be secured from CSET. It must be downloaded first and correctly set up. The installation file and details on configuring CSET and starting the ransomware readiness assessment is available on this GitHub page.
CISA is advocating that all firms must set up the CSET tool and do a Ransomware Readiness Assessment to verify their cybersecurity defenses.