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!!
HWL Ebsworth declare they won’t meet APLHV ransomware gang’s demands
On Friday 9th of June 2023, one of Australia’s largest law firms HWL Ebsworth confirmed to local media outlets that its network was hacked after the ALPHV ransomware gang began leaking data they claim was stolen from the company. The ALPHV ransomware gang has published 1.45 terabytes of data containing over a million documents allegedly stolen from the law firm’s
MOVEit extortion attacks claimed by Clop ransomware gang
The Clop ransomware gang has confirmed that they are behind the MOVEit Transfer attacks where they have been exploiting a zero-day vulnerability to breach servers belonging to “hundreds of companies” and steal data. It has been revealed that the gang had started exploiting the vulnerability on Saturday 27th of May 2023, during the US Memorial Day holiday. At this time, the
Japanese pharmaceutical giant Eisai discloses ransomware attack
On Tuesday 6th of June 2023, Eisai, a Tokyo-based pharmaceutical company Eisai disclosed it suffered a ransomware incident over the weekend that impacted its operations following the threat actors encrypting some of its servers. In response to the attack, Eisai has taken many of its IT systems offline to contain the damage and prevent the spread of the locker to
2.5 million individuals impacted following ransomware against Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Last week, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC), a Massachusetts-based non-profit health services provider released a data breach notice disclosing that a ransomware attack it suffered in April 2023 impacted 2,550,922 people, as well as the threat actors stealing their sensitive data from compromised systems. The notice revealed that the threat actors had maintained access to HPHC’s systems between March 28
8.9 million people impacted by MCNA Dental data breach after ransomware attack
On Friday 26th of May 2023, one of the largest government-sponsored (Medicaid and CHIP) dental care and oral health insurance providers in the U.S., Managed Care of North America (MCNA) Dental released a data breach notification, disclosing almost 9 million patients had their personal data were compromised. MCNA announced in the notice that it had become aware of unauthorized access
Attack against City of Augusta claimed by BlackByte ransomware gang
On Friday 2nd of June 2023, the city of Augusta in Georgia, U.S. confirmed that the recent IT system outage was caused by unauthorized access to its network. The city explained that it started experiencing technical difficulties on Sunday, May 21, which disrupted some of its computer systems. “Augusta’s Information Technology Department continues to work diligently to investigate the incident, to confirm
