The Rise of the Ransomware Cartel
Introduction
In 2020, the Maze Ransomware Group have created a ransomware cartel, and other ransomware groups have joined. The mobilization of this cartel presents new cybersecurity challenges for all organizations, but particularly for SMBs.
What Happened
The Maze ransomware group are now infamous for their highly reported breaches of major organizations this year, including the highly publicized IT services firm Cognizant in April of this year. Cognizant is one of the largest IT managed services companies globally, with close to 300,000 employees and over $15 billion in revenue.
What’s Happening Now
Behind the scenes, cyber-criminal organizations were already utilizing other individuals and entities' skills to assist in the creation of their campaigns. There came a realization that joining forces to share resources with other cyber-criminal organizations will help scale each other's operations more efficiently. It also seems that these groups are collectively leaking stolen information on Maze's public website. Among other things, this site is actively used to name and shame organizations that fail to pay ransomware demands. At the very least, this leaves organizations with little choice but to admit to failings in their security and lack of an organized response. Or as seems to be more common, your name will end up in the media, you suffer reputational damage and possibly sued for damages.
The Maze ransomware group announced the creation of a ransomware cartel in June of this year. Ransomware groups such as Conti, SunCrypt, Lockbit and Ragnar Locker have joined the cartel, with possibly more to follow. This situation will allow them to scale their respective operations more easily now and in the future. If you are interested in seeing the Maze public website, go to https://mazenews.top.
What This Means for You
It is now common knowledge that vast numbers of SMB organizations lack a strategy and a well-developed plan to secure their environments. This is, unfortunately, the primary reason why businesses are losing the fight against these criminals. In many cases, businesses are closing because of the catastrophic results associated with being a victim of ransomware. Companies are ill-equipped to deal with yesterday's challenges, let alone the threats that are continually evolving.
What You Should Do Now
It is now more urgent than ever to adopt industry best practices based on readily available globally recognized standards. These are guide-books on how to be secure. Experience has shown that not every organization will fully understand the requirements laid out in these best-practice standards. For the same reasons you would hire a lawyer to interpret the law, hiring a consultant to provide that guidance is money well spent, especially if you think of how catastrophic the alternative might be.
Closing
Cybercriminals and nation-states are winning this fight and have been for a long time. These problems have existed for decades. They are causing economic damage on an unprecedented scale in today's world. In addition to all of this, COVID-19 has served to highlight the inadequacies of so many organizations this year. Yet, this problem is easily solvable if you have a well-defined strategy. So don't be a victim. Be pro-active and build a strategy to secure your environment and use it as your marketing advantage for your business and stakeholders. Use it as a way to demonstrate the importance that you place on your intellectual property (IP) and sensitive data.
This strategy is what LCM excels at. We have expertise in not only knowing how to interpret these industry standards, but we also have decades of security technical knowledge to help organizations navigate their the way towards a "structured and prioritized" approach to becoming more secure. Contact us for a free consultation and discover why our customers are pleased with our strategy for solving this problem.
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