By now, I am sure you have heard about the global outbreak of ransomware that began on Friday.
“US-CERT has received multiple reports of WannaCry ransomware infections in many countries around the world. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that infects a computer and restricts users’ access to it until a ransom is paid to unlock it.”
For now, due to a clever and lucky researcher, the attack has been thwarted, however, it may not last. So when/if it comes back, I wanted to let you know that several protections are available and/or already in place to protect your systems.
Available Patches:
- For all Windows 10 systems, Windows 10 is not targeted in this attack.
- For Server 2003/XP-users, Microsoft has released an Emergency Out-of-Band patch, even though these systems are no longer officially supported.
- For all other Windows operating systems, patches have been available since March of this year.
For all of our Managed Service customers:
- WebRoot Anti-Virus is installed and reports that it blocks this variant.
- MalwareBytes is installed and reports that it blocks this variant.
- CryptoPrevent anti-crypto software is installed and while untested against this variant, may still provide some protection.
- 99% of the devices we have under management are already patched against this exploit and we are working to resolve the remainder.
Additionally, for our email customers, while our spam/virus filter should detect and block malicious attachments, be extremely wary of any Microsoft Office email attachment that advises you to enable macros to view its content.Unless you are absolutely sure that this is a genuine email from a trusted source, do not enable macros and instead immediately delete the email.
If you are not currently a Managed Services customer and would like these protections going forward, we would be happy to discuss this with you.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call or email.
