The world’s largest meat supplier, JBS, was reported last week to have been hit by a sophisticated ransomware attack that affected its North American and Australian operations, with signs pointing to it being another attack by the REvil group based in Russia. Although JBS has not revealed whether data has been stolen, this has become a common technique for cyber criminals as it allows them to extort their victim even if they have backups of the encrypted data.
Why did JBS ‘Get Slaughtered’…?
Ransomware attacks on large corporations such as JBS are becoming an almost daily occurrence. It begs the question, how aren’t these companies able to stop the attack? It seems inconceivable that a huge company such as JBS, and other victims such as the US oil pipeline, would not have anti-virus software in place. This seems to be a huge thing that is rarely talked about – the ‘standard’ defences of firewalls, anti-virus and so on are not sufficient to protect against modern cyber attacks.
Theoretically, JBS would have a significant budget for cyber security, plus dedicated cyber security staff, so why weren’t they able to prevent a ransomware attack? It’s no secret that ransomware groups are targeting large organisations, and their methods are reasonably well-known. JBS haven’t revealed how their defences were breached, but in an organisation of that size it can be very difficult to prevent a determined and skilled cyber criminal from breaching the outer defences, and therefore the best defence is to ensure you can detect and block an attack as it occurs on your network.
How Can You Avoid Falling Victim to Ransomware Attacks?
Along with everyone else, we have watched these organisations become the victims of ransomware attacks, knowing that they must be using anti-virus software and that it didn’t stop the attack. We have therefore made sure that we offer services that actually protect against ransomware attacks such as that suffered by JBS. Our solution is our Managed Endpoint Detection and Response Service (M-EDR), which you can think of as a more advanced version of anti-virus that, alongside your existing anti-virus, works to protect and defend you against these more sophisticated threats. The Managed part is key – we have a 24/7 Security Operations Centre that is working on your behalf, collecting information from your laptops and other devices in real time, allowing our analysts to block anything that may cause damage to data on the device, such as ransomware. We combine leading-edge technology with our highly skilled analysts to provide that enhanced level of protection.
We believe our M-EDR service should be within the reach of all organisations, large or small, so our M-EDR service is much more affordable than you’d think. And if you’d like to take your cyber security even further, we have our flagship MDR service – Triarii, that extends our protection across your entire network and cloud.
So, if you don’t want to end up like JBS, and you’d like us to ‘save your bacon’, contact us now for more information.
