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!!
BlackCat ransomware claims responsibility for an attack against a European gas pipeline
On Monday 25th of July 2022, the Encevo Group announced that two entities of the group had been victims of a cyber attack that occurred between Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd of July 2022. The incident involved the customer portals becoming unavailable although, there were no interruptions to the supply of electricity and gas. A further update posted on Thursday
Microsoft draws connections between Raspberry Robin malware and Evil Corp attacks
On Thursday 28th of July 2022, Microsoft researchers revealed that an access broker (DEV-0206) they have been tracking has been observed using the Raspberry Robin Windows worm to deploy a malware downloader on networks as well as showing signs of Evil Corp pre-ransomware deploy tactics. According to Microsoft’s threat intelligence advisory, they have found Raspberry Robin malware on the networks of hundreds
LockBit make wrong claim about an attack on the Italian Revenue Agency
After LockBit’s claim of attacking the Italian Revenue Agency on the 25th, an investigation done by the Red Hot Cyber (RHC) open-news project has revealed that the stolen data is from another Italian organisation, GESIS Srl. The investigation discovered that the threat actor who stole the data was an affiliate and when asked if they were sure that the data
WordFly experiences a ransomware attack, resulting in the loss of stolen data
On Sunday 10th of July 2022, WordFly, a major mailing list provider experienced a ransomware attack which resulted in the WordFly website being taken offline as well as data related to their clients being stolen. In an announcement released on Tuesday 19th of July 2022, WordFly stated that their engineering team discovered a network disruption on Sunday 10th of July
LockBit ransomware group claim to have stolen 78 GB of files from the Italian Revenue Agency
On Monday 25th of July 2022, the LockBit ransomware group listed the Agenzia delle Entrate (Italian Revenue Agency) on their data leak site where they claimed to have stolen 78GB of data and are threatening to leak the allegedly stolen data if a ransom isn’t paid by Sunday 31st of July 2022. LockBit has claimed that the allegedly stolen data
St. Marys, a small Canadian town hit by LockBit ransomware
On Wednesday 20th of July 2022, the Canadian town of St. Marys in Ontario experienced a ransomware attack that locked staff out of internal systems and encrypted data. The incident has been claimed by the LockBit ransomware group who posted a listing on their data leak site as well as provided some of the screenshots of the stolen files as
