The 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report reported a 71.2 percent decline in the number of ransomware attacks, but a 101.2 percent increase the number of ransomware variants. Let me ask you, is this good news or bad?

If this was a military battle, would you celebrate the news the enemy reduced the number of machine guns by nearly three quarters but doubled the number of snipers? Perhaps, but now you’d have to keep your head lower and stay out of sight.

2016 saw a flood of “spray-and-pray” ransomware attacks as hackers were taking advantage of soft defenses and low levels of employee awareness. In fact, in 2016 SonicWall blocked nearly 640 million ransomware attacks; that was over 1,200 ransoms not seen (or paid) each minute.

Because of this intense pressure, organizations around the globe bolstered their defenses and education efforts. Simply put, we got tired of getting beat up for our lunch money and took Kung-Fu lessons.

Attackers retool ransomware strategies

In 2017, attackers retooled with new exploits. From that, WannaCry, NotPetya and Bad Rabbit were born. Each were designed to be malware cocktails that infected a system and then move on to the rest of the network through shared drives. But these are just three of the 2,855 variants SonicWall created defenses for in 2017 alone.

With these new malware cocktails in the wild, threat actors targeted specific roles within companies through social engineering. Instead of annoying thousands of people with a small ransom with a shrinking chance they will pay, many switched to hard-hitting attacks with larger demands.

One such instance was the city of Atlanta, where the SamSam ransomware variant affected five out of 13 city departments and shut down systems for 10 days. Fortunately, the $51,000 ransom went unpaid but the damages to systems, lost files and productivity far outweigh the demand.

How to stop ransomware attacks, avoid ransom payouts

So, what can we do in this period of the threat landscape? Employee awareness for social engineering attacks (e.g., phishing attempts) still needs to drastically improve. Strong password hygiene also needs to be in place to block attacks like SamSam that work off of guessed passwords.

From there, we need ransomware protection technology in place that stops attacks. Here are two core technologies have may not have thought of recently:

1. Implement a network sandbox that can identify and stop unknown attacks.

   A network sandbox is an isolated environment on the firewall that runs files to monitor their behavior. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a multi-engine sandbox service that holds suspicious files at the gateway until a verdict can be achieved.

   Capture ATP also features Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection^TM (RTDMI). RTDMI is a memory-based malware analysis engine that catches more malware, and faster, than behavior-based sandboxing methods. It also delivers a lower false-positive rate to improve security and the end-user experience. Learn about its ability to find and block malicious PDFs and Office documents.

2. Use advanced endpoint client security

   For years, companies deployed traditional anti-virus (AV) on their computers, which was fine when the total number of signatures they had to write and update numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Last year, SonicWall discovered 58 million new forms of malware that take time to signature and push to defense points like firewalls.

   Even if these are pushed within 24 hours, it leaves a gap that new and advanced malware can walk right through. I recommend using a next-generation anti-virus (NGAV) solution that can monitor the behavior of a system to look for malicious activities, such as the unauthorized encryption of your files. For example, SonicWall Capture Client delivers advanced malware protection and additional security synergies for SonicWall firewall users.

On top of these two new forms of technology, please follow best practices when securing and managing your networks, such as network segmentation.