The ransomware attack WannaCry is a warning to many organizations to increase their cybersecurity protocols. The cloud offers a fast-track to ransomware proliferation and must be secured to prevent a devastating attack.

There are several techniques you can use to increase the security of your cloud. The two areas of focus when increasing cloud cybersecurity include the technology itself and the end users.

Cloud Infrastructure Security
The specific areas in the cloud that you can work to secure against a ransomware attack include:

Cloud Compute Layer
A secure cloud compute layer prevents cybercriminals from utilizing organizational computing power to spread malware. You can begin securing your cloud compute layer through enabling secure login by issuing SSH keys.

Data Storage
Frequent backups in a separate location are key to preventing a ransomware attack. Many healthcare organizations have utilized their backups to avoid paying high fines to unlock their data. If you cannot trust your cloud provider to implement secure backups, you should look into cold storage data storage solutions on a separate MFA-protected account.

Network
Implementing segmentation into the network adds one more gate between your customer’s data and a cyberattack. Creating gates between activities as well as walls and containment areas around components is necessary to the success of your company.

Jump Host
A jump host is the singular access to all other servers and hosts in the system. This jump host can only be logged into by corporate IPs, which then allows access to the rest of the business. This single access point simplifies protection as well as maintaining strict access controls. If this host gets jumped it is easy to create a new one, hence the name jump host.

End User Security
While you can integrate these ransomware security protocols into your infrastructure, another key consideration is your employees. While proper training and ongoing education is crucial to cybersecurity, there are other protocols in the cloud you can implement to prevent a ransomware attack. These include:

Hypervisor Firewalls
A firewall that is managed at the hypervisor level gives you the control to guard access to inbound and outbound data. For greater consistency across the environment, write real-time monitoring and enforcement actions on the firewall.

Monitor Usage
Constant monitoring of who accesses what within your network should begin to establish behavioral patterns you can use to your advantage when preventing an attack. This monitoring is also necessary when tracing the source of a cyberattack.

Limited Access to Data
Managing the access your employees have to data utilizing passwords and multi-factor authentication is an excellent way to prevent against ransomware attacks. It is also important to limit the number of people who have access to sensitive data.

The Crossroads cybersecurity team has implemented security protocols to prevent against cyberattacks for the past 20 years and we would be happy to discuss how to strengthen your network against a ransomware attack, today. Contact us to get started.