Recently, the international community saw a significant victory in the fight toward a safer and more secure cyberspace. The Department of Justice announced it had, in partnership with other organizations, successfully taken down the Hive ransomware network.
It's a sophisticated and well-coordinated network of hackers who targeted vulnerable businesses and organizations, encrypting their sensitive data and demanding a ransom payment in exchange for the decryption key.
The group was responsible for infecting numerous businesses and organizations around the world. Victims included over 1,500 organizations across 80 countries worldwide, including hospitals, school districts, financial firms, and critical infrastructure. The DOJ estimated that victims had paid out $100 million to attackers.
In addition to disrupting the network, the FBI also captured decryption keys from Hive’s computer networks and provided those assets to victims to avoid payment. In total, they estimate that they saved $130 million in ransom.
This takedown offers several positive effects for managed services providers (MSPs), including removing one significant risk from today’s threat landscape that may affect your clients. With the Hive ransomware network taken down, MSP clients are one step closer to living in a safer digital world and can feel free of the fear that they may face an attack from this ransomware gang.
The poster pack includes:
- Best practices for creating strong passwords
- Reminders on how secure passwords should look like
- A chart to check if your password is secure enough
However, while disrupting the Hive ransomware network is an essential step in the right direction, it does not mean that MSP business leaders or your clients can slacken off when it comes to implementing the latest cybersecurity protections. Attacks in 2023 are still estimated to cost organizations $8 trillion worth of damage — a number expected to rise to $10.5 trillion by 2025.
Further reading Top 5 Common Cybersecurity Attacks MSPs Should Know in 2024
MSPs can play an important role in helping clients prepare for these upcoming attacks. The first step is to ensure you are educating yourself on the current threat landscape, especially regarding your clients’ particular industry or size. While it looks like the DOJ has defeated the Hive ransomware network, there are other types of ransomware and other attacks, such as data theft, insider threats, phishing, and more. Once you’ve gathered this information, you can share it with clients, so they know the risks they face.
Further reading Will Ransomware Drive Innovation in 2024?
From there, you can work hand in hand with clients to build a cybersecurity strategy to ensure a strong defense against today’s risks. One piece of this cybersecurity strategy is mapping each customer's environment and ascertaining the full scope of what needs to be protected, as well as what areas might be most at risk. Once you have that visibility, you can build a plan to implement new technologies and services to mitigate those risks. An MSP can also play a role in training client employees and leadership on practicing cybersecurity best practices, including avoiding phishing attacks, and safe web browsing.
In addition, the strategy should also include ongoing monitoring and maintenance of the environment — as strong cybersecurity is not a single-point-in-time exercise! Using remote monitoring and other tools, MSPs can help pinpoint signs of an attack early, so it can be investigated and stopped in its tracks. Additionally, you can keep an eye out for cybersecurity patches or other system updates and implement them to close newly discovered vulnerabilities and ensure all software is up to date.
While the Hive ransomware network takedown marks a significant victory in the ongoing fight to mitigate cyber risk, it is not the end of the road. For many years to come, MSPs will still have an essential role in ensuring that their clients can operate safely in the latest evolving risk landscape.
- Phishing response checklist
- Phishing awareness training slides
- Anti-phishing posters
About the author
Kurt Abrahams is the Vice President of Marketing at MSP360 with expertise in technology marketing, cybersecurity and AI based technology.