In cybersecurity, ransomware susceptibility and exposure scoring quantify an organization's vulnerability to ransomware attacks. It involves assessing various factors contributing to an attack's likelihood and potential impact. This scoring system provides a measurable way to understand and prioritize ransomware risks.

Key Components:

• Susceptibility Scoring: This focuses on evaluating the likelihood of a ransomware attack. Factors considered might include:

• Presence of known vulnerabilities: Are there unpatched vulnerabilities in software or systems that attackers could exploit?

• Strength of access controls: Are solid passwords and multi-factor authentication in place?

• Security awareness training: Are employees trained to identify and avoid phishing and social engineering attacks?

• Third-party risk: Do third-party vendors and suppliers have adequate security practices?

• Exposure Scoring: This assesses the potential impact of a ransomware attack. Factors considered might include:

• Criticality of assets: How critical are the systems and data that could be affected by an attack?

• Data backups and recovery plans: Are there reliable backups and a well-defined recovery plan in place?

• Financial impact: What would be the economic consequences of downtime, data loss, and recovery costs?

• Reputational damage: How would a ransomware attack impact the organization's reputation and customer trust?

Benefits of Ransomware Susceptibility and Exposure Scoring:

• Prioritization: Helps organizations prioritize security by focusing on the most significant risk areas.

• Risk assessment: Provides a quantitative measure of ransomware risk, allowing organizations to make informed decisions about security investments.

• Benchmarking: Allows organizations to compare their ransomware risk posture to industry benchmarks and identify areas for improvement.

• Continuous monitoring: Enables organizations to track their ransomware risk over time and measure the effectiveness of security controls.

• Communication: Provides a clear and concise way to communicate ransomware risk to stakeholders, including management, board members, and insurers.

ThreatNG offers a robust ransomware susceptibility and exposure scoring solution, combining its comprehensive discovery, assessment, monitoring, and threat intelligence capabilities. Here's how it helps:

1. Comprehensive Discovery and Assessment:

• Identifying all external-facing assets: ThreatNG discovers and maps all internet-facing assets, including web servers, email servers, VPNs, cloud instances, IoT devices, and third-party connections. This provides a complete view of the organization's attack surface, leaving no blind spots for attackers to exploit.

• Assessing for ransomware susceptibility: ThreatNG's assessment engine analyzes the identified assets for vulnerabilities that could be exploited in a ransomware attack. This includes:

• Exposed ports and services: Identifying open ports and services that could be used to deliver malware or gain unauthorized access.

• Outdated software: Detecting outdated software versions with known vulnerabilities that ransomware attackers could exploit.

• Weak access controls: Identifying weak passwords, missing multi-factor authentication, and other access control issues that could allow attackers to gain a foothold.

• Misconfigurations: Identifying misconfigured systems and applications that could be exploited to deploy ransomware.

• Sensitive data exposure: Identifying exposed databases, cloud storage, and other sensitive information that could be targeted for encryption or exfiltration.

2. Continuous Monitoring and Threat Intelligence:

• Monitoring for emerging threats: ThreatNG continuously monitors the threat landscape for new ransomware strains, attack techniques, and vulnerabilities. This allows organizations to update their defenses and stay proactively ahead of emerging threats.

• Dark web monitoring: ThreatNG monitors the dark web for mentions of the organization, leaked credentials, and ransomware group activity. This provides early warnings of potential attacks and allows organizations to take proactive measures.

• Ransomware group tracking: ThreatNG tracks known ransomware groups and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This helps organizations understand their threats and prioritize their defenses accordingly.

3. Ransomware Susceptibility and Exposure Scoring:

• Quantitative risk assessment: ThreatNG assigns a ransomware susceptibility and exposure score based on the identified vulnerabilities, the criticality of affected assets, and the organization's overall security posture. This score quantitatively measures ransomware risk, allowing organizations to make informed decisions about security investments.

• Dynamic and actionable reports: ThreatNG provides dynamic ransomware susceptibility reports highlighting specific vulnerabilities and risks. These reports are tailored to the organization's unique attack surface and provide actionable recommendations for reducing the risk of ransomware attacks.

• Prioritization and remediation: These reports help organizations prioritize their remediation efforts by focusing on the most critical vulnerabilities and risks.

4. Investigation Modules and Capabilities:

• Domain intelligence: ThreatNG's domain intelligence module can identify suspicious domains and subdomains that could be used for malware distribution or command-and-control activities. This helps prevent attackers from establishing a foothold on the organization's network.

• Sensitive code exposure: ThreatNG can detect exposed code repositories and other sensitive information that could be used to compromise systems or steal data, reducing the attack surface available to ransomware operators.

• Cloud and SaaS exposure: ThreatNG can identify misconfigured cloud and SaaS services that ransomware attackers could exploit. This helps organizations secure their cloud environments and prevent data breaches.

• Archived web pages: ThreatNG can analyze archived web pages to identify potential malware infections or past vulnerabilities that may have been exploited. This helps organizations understand their historical security posture and identify areas for improvement.

Working with Complementary Solutions:

ThreatNG can integrate with other security solutions to enhance its ransomware susceptibility and exposure-scoring capabilities:

• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): Integrate with EDR solutions to detect and respond to ransomware attacks that may have bypassed perimeter defenses.

• Anti-malware software: Integrate with anti-malware solutions to detect and remove ransomware from endpoints and servers.

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Integrate with SIEM solutions to correlate ThreatNG's external threat intelligence with internal security logs, providing a holistic view of security events and ransomware activity.

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Integrate with DLP solutions to prevent sensitive data from leaving the organization's network, reducing the risk of data exfiltration in a ransomware attack.

• Vulnerability Scanners: Integrate with vulnerability scanners to gain a deeper understanding of internal and external vulnerabilities, further refining the accuracy of the scoring.

Examples:

• Prioritizing remediation efforts: ThreatNG identifies a critical vulnerability in a web application exposed to the internet. Due to its potential for exploitation, the vulnerability has a high ransomware susceptibility score. The organization prioritizes patching this vulnerability to reduce its risk.

• Evaluating third-party risk: ThreatNG assesses the security posture of a third-party vendor and identifies several vulnerabilities that could be exploited in a ransomware attack. The vendor's ransomware susceptibility score is high, prompting the organization to work with the vendor to improve its security practices.

• Monitoring for changes in risk: ThreatNG continuously monitors the organization's external attack surface and updates the ransomware susceptibility and exposure score based on new vulnerabilities, changes in the threat landscape, and improvements in security controls. This allows the organization to track its progress in reducing its ransomware risk over time.

By leveraging ThreatNG's comprehensive capabilities and integrating with complementary solutions, organizations can effectively assess and score their ransomware susceptibility and exposure, prioritize security efforts, and mitigate the risk of ransomware attacks.