Nihon Cyber Defence Co., Ltd.
HELP and ADVICE - Ransomware
Unfortunately, it is not a case of if, but when you will be impacted …
Nihon Cyber Defence’s (NCD) highly experienced team understands the challenges that the victims of these attacks face. We know that CEOs, CIOs and CISO’s and Senior Leadership Teams, need objective, helpful and timely advice to allow them to lead a successful recovery and mitigation.
Therefore, we have launched an advice service that gives victim organisations immediate access to the right guidance through industry experts, allowing organisations to prepare or respond to incidents.
We will assist in preparing, defending or responding to an attack and whilst our ransomware advice service is currently intended primarily for Japanese organisations, NCD has impressive experience working on ransomware and other forms of devastating cyber-attacks globally. You can learn more about what we offer here…
At Nihon Cyber Defence (NCD) we see the impact that cyber-attacks and in particular ransomware attacks can have. Whilst it has been major ransomware attacks that have dominated the headlines, the reality is that an enormous range of organisations are being impacted.
This increase in the number and sophistication of attacks has been driven by Ransomware as a Service (RaaS), that has made sophisticated cyber tools available to a growing range of criminal groups.
Dealing with a major cyber incident
For an organisation’s senior management, a ransomware attack is a major test of leadership. At NCD we believe that is important that senior managers, who are often under immense pressure, are supported through an incident. We have therefore – at the suggestion of several organisations that we have helped – are launching a cyber security advice service.
The key elements of this service are that it is:
- Confidential
- Cost effective
- Provides access to world-class cyber security experts
- For anyone in a leadership position
Purpose
The sole purpose of the NCD Advice Service is to help you recover from a Cyber Attack
Process
The way that this service works is:
- Companies that believe that they may have become the victim of a cyber-attack, contact NCD through our online portal (please do not use an email address that may have been compromised in the attack).
- A Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is quickly put in place to ensure complete confidentiality.
- After an initial discussion with a native Japanese speaker, a secure video conferencing call will be set up between the company’s management and world-class cyber security experts who have dealt with many hundreds of cyber security incidents. This call can be in English or with Japanese translation.
- During the call senior managers CEO’s, CIOs, CFO’s, CISO’s or anyone else who finds themselves in a cyber incident management leadership role will have the opportunity to ask questions of these experts. These can be general questions around best and poor practice or specific technical questions.
Asking the right questions
For senior managers who do not have a technical background we will equip you with the questions to ask of your Incident Response team. They could include:
- Technical Understanding – How did the incident happen? Has the access and attack vector been identified and closed? Is the attacker off the network or still there? Is there still a risk of further attack
- Mitigation – What is the damage? What data has been affected or exfiltrated. How do we deal and mitigate this?
- Attribution and Investigation – Who was behind the attack? Why was the victim targeted? Is there an option to pay? Will we negotiate to identify the data exfoliated or to delay exposure? Do we know where the exposure will be … can we disrupt this? Can we recover the encrypted data? Should you involve law enforcement?
- Regulatory– What action is required from the data protection authorities or financial regulatory authorities?
- Comms – What is the internal and external Comms plan? Will this be protective or reactive (pending exposure)? How will we inform affected data subjects?
- Resilience – What is the plan to rebuild our network securely and how can we re-establish customer confidence and commercial reputation?
- Governance – What advice and guidance should be made available to the Board during an incident? How should the Incident be managed?
- Support – What external support do you require? As importantly, what support do we not require? How do we manage the expense of this support?
- Engagement with the hostile actors. Should we engage? What are the risks associated with paying the ransom? How should engagement be taken forward?
Whilst this is designed to be a one-off service, many of our clients have found our experts’ advice to be invaluable and ask us to remain engaged acting as a critical friend or to provide specialist technical services through the attack.
Other services
- Preparation– boards awareness, incident planning and exercising
- Monitoring – developing the deployment of the technical solutions pre and post in a cyber incident
Consultants
Our customers tell us that, having won the work, the major consulting companies use primarily junior staff to carry out the work. At NCD we only use consultants with many decades of experience.
Latest Ransomware News!!
UAC-0099 Using WinRAR Exploit to Target Ukrainian Firms with LONEPAGE Malware
The threat actor identified as UAC-0099 has been associated with ongoing cyberattacks targeting Ukraine, some of which exploit a critical vulnerability in WinRAR to deploy a malware variant known as LONEPAGE. According to cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct, “The threat actor primarily focuses on Ukrainian employees working for foreign companies.” This observation was made in a report published on Thursday. UAC-0099
Over 25,000 SonicWall VPN Firewalls exposed to critical flaws
A recent analysis by cybersecurity firm Bishop Fox uncovered that over 25,000 publicly accessible SonicWall SSLVPN devices are vulnerable to critical security flaws, with 20,000 running outdated SonicOS/OSX firmware that is no longer supported by the vendor. The study identified a total of 430,363 publicly exposed SonicWall firewalls, significantly expanding the potential attack surface for cyber threats. Many of these
Key electricity distributor in Romania warns of ‘cyber attack in progress’
A leading energy services company in Romania has confirmed that it is currently dealing with an ongoing cyberattack. Electrica Group, a company listed on both the Bucharest and London stock exchanges that supplies electricity to over 3.8 million customers in Romania, stated to investors on Monday, alerting them to a “cyber attack in progress.”According to the company’s CEO, Alexandru Chirita,
Suspected Ukrainian hackers impersonating Russian ministries to spy on industry
According to researchers, a hacker group believed to be linked to Ukraine is conducting a new cyber espionage campaign against the Russian scientific and industrial sectors. The Russian cybersecurity company F.A.C.C.T. detected fraudulent emails that appeared to be from Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade. These emails, detailed in a report published on Wednesday, urged local defense industry firms to
Blue Yonder ransomware attack disrupts grocery store supply chain
A ransomware attack targeted software provider Blue Yonder last week, leading to disruptions at multiple grocery stores and retailers, including Starbucks and two major supermarket chains in the UK. Blue Yonder, a global supply chain management service provider for over 3,000 organizations, confirmed on Friday that its managed services-hosted environment was hit by a ransomware incident on Nov. UK grocery
Hackers Hijack Unsecured Jupyter Notebooks to Stream Illegal Sports Broadcasts
Cybercriminals are taking advantage of poorly configured JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebooks to engage in stream ripping and facilitate sports piracy using live-streaming capture tools. The attackers gain initial access by hijacking unsecured Jupyter Notebooks and then execute a series of actions aimed at illegally streaming sports events. This hidden piracy operation was uncovered by the cloud security firm after one
