Ransomware protection with Zero Trust Segmentation

Illumio provides protection that contains ransomware at the source

The problem with ransomware

Organizations' assets and operations are being targeted by criminal gangs using more sophisticated ransomware with better evasion techniques. Defenses are regularly breached with detection systems, and need to work harder to identify and respond. Illumio ransomware protection contains the attack at the source, preserving the resilience of your organization.

Ransomware protection is a resilience issue

Ransomware attacks can prevent an organization from delivering its primary service.
Organizations are vulnerable to more targeted ransomware attacks on IT and OT environments.
Successful attacks can damage an organization's reputation, operations and revenue.

Ransomware statistics

76^%
76% of organizations experienced a ransomware attack in the last two years.
70^%
70% of ransomware incidents create more than several days of business disruption.
79^%
79% of incident response engagements are ransomware related.

How does ransomware propagate?

MITRE ATT&CK® tactics essential to ransomware

Network discovery helps the attacker build a better understanding of the target environment — what exists, how are they interconnected, what is accessible.

Stop this and the attacker has less useful information about the victim’s network — the net effect is that they are either limited in the progress they can make or are forced to change their tactics to gather the same information, increasing the chances of detection.

Lateral movement enables the attacker to move to the next target or intermediary victim.

Stop this and the attack cannot progress any further, significantly reducing the number of compromised resources.

Ransomware attacks follow a very predictable method of spreading across hybrid IT once they have successfully entered an organization. Two of the key tactics employed in this process are “network and domain discovery” and “lateral movement."

Limiting or preventing network discovery and lateral movement severely hampers the progress of the attack. However, doing this successfully has been a challenge for organizations due to:

Poor visibility
A lack of visibility makes it difficult to identify potential weak points in the system, and monitor the movements of the attacker.
Too many open ports
Commonly used ports left open create pathways for ransomware to quickly spread and take over the organization.
A lack of proactive security defenses
Relying solely on detection-based solutions has shown to be too slow in stopping an attack.

Zero Trust Segmentation directly addresses lateral movement and other challenges

Contains ransomware attacks
Maintains the resiliency of the business
Makes organizations less vulnerable to targeted attacks
Protects operations, revenue, and reputation

How Zero Trust Segmentation mitigates ransomware

For organizations focused on improving their cyber resilience, Illumio identifies where they are most exposed and, through Zero Trust Segmentation, drastically reduces both their exposed attack surface and the ability of an attacker to spread.

Illumio creates value by drastically reducing the exposed attack surface

How does Illumio help?

Protect high-value assets
Isolate ransomware at its point of entry — without complex detection methods or making changes to the network — proactively or reactively.
Identify risks to the organization
Understand your highest security risks and see all dependencies. Enforce informed security policies.
Build long-term ransomware protection
Enhance defense-in-depth with Zero Trust Segmentation. Easily identify and protect high-value assets.

The world’s largest organizations stop ransomware from spreading with Illumio

“We had a concern with a particular manufacturing site that there was a potential for malware. We can very quickly put that containment in place even if it wasn’t at full enforcement. We put the containment in so that site could continue operating without disruption.”

Jamie Rossato

Chief Information Security Officer
Lion

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Lion Co. employees inside a bottling factory discussing security.

The simple yet powerful graphical map provided visibility that we never had before. I knew that it would be invaluable to easily understand and control what’s happening inside our network.

Mikael Karlsson

Head of Department IT Infrastructure,
AFA Försäkring

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Illumio stood out from the crowd with its speed and ease. We were able to get it up and running within less than a half an hour. Instantly, we could see our traffic and set up policies to protect our network.

David Hanna

Security Operations and Network Administration,
Hi-Temp Insulation

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Segmentation became an imperative next step to mitigate risk and protect new and legacy workloads. We needed a way to accurately identify, visualize, and control lateral traffic.

Nathan Powell

IT Operations Manager,
Investa

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Law firms around the world are focused on stopping ransomware and securing customer data, and Illumio has been a strategic technology protecting our business in the cloud and the data center. It help us to assess and prioritize risks, build Zero Trust policies to secure our data, and better continuously protect our business.

Head of Infrastructure and Operations

Global Law Firm

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Related resources

3 Ways Zero Trust Segmentation Helps Financial Organizations

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3 Ways Zero Trust Segmentation Helps Financial Organizations

Here are three ways Zero Trust Segmentation helps financial organizations address cybersecurity challenges and improve their overall cyber resilience.

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