Author: 

Russ Simons

FM Issue: 

July/August 2017

Unless you have been living under a rock or producing multiple events simultaneously, perhaps you have been coordinating changeovers, settling shows, booking future events, conducting a renovation or been involved in any of the multitude of activities that public assembly facility professionals regularly deal with, you have heard about the latest global Ransomware attack “Wannacry.”

Before I address the “Wannacry” attack, I want to set the foundation for Ransomware. Simply stated, Ransomware is a program that takes control of your computer, encrypting your information, and denying you access. All information, including files, folders, and photos, are no longer available to you. The perpetrator will then hold the information hostage until you pay for the encryption key.

Should you pay? Most experts agree that you should not pay the ransom. Easy for them to say, as it is not their information that has been kidnapped. The reason that experts recommend not paying is because there is no guarantee whatsoever that the payment will allow you access to your files. The other reason is that payment only encourages more Ransomware attacks.

How to protect your information:

According to Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, the best tool you have to protect your information is a very disciplined commitment to backing up your files. Recent ransomware attacks have not only encrypted data files but also Windows’ system restore points and shadow copies, which could have been used to partially restore data after a ransomware attack.

Backups should be stored on a separate system that cannot be accessed from a network and updated regularly to ensure that a system can be effectively restored after an attack. There are, unfortunately, many people who thought that their information was protected, but failed to check to ensure that the restore protocols were viable. That is when they understood that their data was truly gone.

Other strategies:

• Educate employees. Ransomware often infects a system through email attachments, downloads, and web browsing. Organizations should conduct regular training to help employees avoid common malware mistakes.
• Conduct regular data backups and store the backups offline.
• It is also important to regularly verify the data backup process to ensure backups are capturing all necessary data and that the restore process works properly. You don’t want to discover that it is defective at the point you need to restore data from it. It is also important to point out that popular online backup solutions may be vulnerable to a ransomware attack, as the backed-up data may be overwritten with a newer version that is already encrypted by ransomware.
• Restrict administrative and system access. Some strains of ransomware are designed to use a system administrator account to perform their operations.
• Maintain and update software. Another important, yet basic, rule for protecting against and/or ensuring early detection of ransomware is to maintain and update software, security and anti-malware software.
• American Security Today suggests that you ask yourself one fundamental question: “What would I do differently, if I knew I was going to be compromised?”

Establish an incident response team:

Far too often, internal confusion about how to respond to an active cyber threat delays an adequate response. Lines of communication must be established in advance, along with a clear chain of command and a decision-making tree. Note, the chain of command to make decisions in a cyber event in your facility may be different than the traditional responses to issues because of the specific skill sets needed.

This team needs to be intimately familiar with which systems can be safely shut down. Do not forget that it is important to know how to shut the systems down including sequencing. You are encouraged to think through in advance what the expected and unexpected consequences will be from those actions. If this is not communicated and trained in advance, then there is a very real chance to cause additional harm. It is also important to determine if a live threat will affect critical components of your organization’s infrastructure particularly as it may affect events.

A variety of threat scenarios need to be considered and drills designed to identify gaps in procedures and what tools or resources are needed to ensure that a response is immediate and effective.

The cyber event incident response team also needs to have a means of communicating that does not rely on the availability or integrity of the organization’s IT.

Finally, you need to address a common problem experienced even by organizations that have an incident response team in place. This team needs to have the authority to make decisions and changes. Bottlenecking the decision-making process can delay response times and compound the effect of an active cyber threat.

“Wannacry” Ransomware:

The most recent wave of ransomware, “Wannacry,” appeared on Friday, May 12, 2017 and quickly spread across the globe. It has been determined that the ransomware spreads on its own by scanning for systems vulnerable to MS17-010 (a vulnerability within Microsoft’s SMB protocol).

We are, in my opinion, only at the beginning of more frequent and destructive ransomware attacks and other malware attacks. My best advice is to communicate and train all staff members on how to minimize exposure, as the vast majority of these types of attacks come through staff portals.

Russ Simons is the Chief Listening Officer and managing partner for Venue Solutions Group. Russ leads the Cyber Working Group for the IAVM Safety & Security Committee.