Interactive Ransomware Resilience Assessment
Evaluate your organization's ransomware preparedness and resilience across prevention, detection, response, and recovery capabilities. Get actionable recommendations to strengthen defenses against ransomware attacks.
Ransomware Recovery Gaps?
Our team tests backup recovery, hardens defenses, and prepares incident response procedures.
What Is Ransomware Resilience Assessment
A ransomware resilience assessment evaluates an organization's ability to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from a ransomware attack. Ransomware remains the most financially devastating form of cyberattack — the average recovery cost reached $2.73 million in 2024 according to the Sophos State of Ransomware Report, with average downtime of 22 days.
This assessment evaluates your defenses across the ransomware kill chain: initial access prevention, execution blocking, lateral movement detection, data exfiltration prevention, backup integrity, and recovery capabilities.
Ransomware Kill Chain
| Stage | Attack Technique | Defense |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Access | Phishing email, RDP exploitation, VPN vulnerability | Email filtering, MFA, patch management, EDR |
| Execution | Malicious attachment, PowerShell, macro | Application allowlisting, script controls, EDR |
| Persistence | Registry modification, scheduled tasks, services | Endpoint monitoring, baseline comparison |
| Privilege Escalation | Credential theft, exploit local vulnerabilities | Least privilege, PAM, patch management |
| Lateral Movement | PsExec, WMI, RDP, SMB | Network segmentation, EDR, NDR |
| Exfiltration | Data theft before encryption (double extortion) | DLP, network monitoring, egress filtering |
| Encryption | File encryption, shadow copy deletion | Backup isolation, canary files, EDR |
| Extortion | Ransom demand, data leak threat | Incident response plan, communication plan, cyber insurance |
Common Use Cases
- Security gap analysis: Identify weaknesses in your ransomware defenses across prevention, detection, response, and recovery capabilities
- Board risk reporting: Quantify ransomware readiness for executive leadership with specific capability scores and remediation priorities
- Insurance qualification: Document ransomware controls for cyber insurance applications, which increasingly require specific protections (MFA, backups, EDR)
- Compliance alignment: Map ransomware resilience to NIST CSF, CIS Controls, and industry-specific requirements
- Incident preparation: Verify that your backup, response, and recovery capabilities will actually work when ransomware hits
Best Practices
- Implement immutable backups — Ransomware operators specifically target backups. Use immutable storage (WORM), air-gapped backups, or offline backup copies that cannot be encrypted by malware.
- Deploy EDR on all endpoints — Endpoint Detection and Response provides the most effective defense against ransomware execution. Ensure 100% coverage, not just servers.
- Enforce MFA everywhere — MFA on VPN, email, RDP, and privileged accounts blocks the most common initial access vectors. SMS-based MFA is better than nothing but phishable — use hardware keys or app-based MFA.
- Test backup restoration — 60% of organizations that pay ransoms still cannot fully recover. Regular restore testing (monthly for critical systems) is the only way to verify your recovery capability.
- Segment networks aggressively — Flat networks allow ransomware to spread from a single compromised endpoint to every system. Segment by function and restrict lateral movement with firewall rules.
References & Citations
- CISA, FBI, and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. (2024). StopRansomware Guide. Retrieved from https://www.cisa.gov/stopransomware (accessed January 2025)
- Sophos. (2024). The State of Ransomware 2024. Retrieved from https://www.sophos.com/en-us/labs/security-threat-report (accessed January 2025)
Note: These citations are provided for informational and educational purposes. Always verify information with the original sources and consult with qualified professionals for specific advice related to your situation.
Key Security Terms
Understand the essential concepts behind this tool
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about the Interactive Ransomware Resilience Assessment
Ransomware resilience assessment evaluates your ability to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from ransomware attacks. It examines backup strategies, network segmentation, endpoint protection, email security, access controls, incident response plans, and recovery capabilities. Assessment identifies vulnerabilities and provides prioritized recommendations to reduce ransomware risk and minimize impact if attacked.
Critical controls include: email security filtering (blocks 90%+ delivery), endpoint detection and response, application whitelisting, regular patching, network segmentation, privileged access management, multi-factor authentication, user training, and secure RDP configuration. Defense-in-depth approach layers controls so attackers must defeat multiple protections. Focus on preventing initial access and lateral movement.
Follow 3-2-1-1 rule: 3 copies of data, 2 different media types, 1 offsite, 1 offline/immutable. Implement air-gapped or immutable backups that ransomware cannot encrypt. Test restoration regularly (quarterly minimum). Maintain versioned backups to recover pre-encryption data. Backup critical systems first. Document recovery procedures. Consider continuous data protection for critical assets. Backups are last line of defense.
Early detection is crucial—aim for detection within minutes to hours, before widespread encryption. Implement 24/7 monitoring for ransomware indicators: unusual file access patterns, suspicious encryption activity, shadow copy deletion, backup system tampering, and lateral movement. EDR and SIEM tools with ransomware-specific detection rules enable rapid response. Average detection time is improving but still exceeds 24 hours for many organizations.
Plan should cover: decision tree for containment actions, communication protocols (internal and external), system isolation procedures, backup verification steps, law enforcement notification process, ransom payment decision framework, recovery prioritization, and public relations strategy. Pre-establish relationships with incident response firms, legal counsel, and cyber insurance. Conduct tabletop exercises quarterly to test plan effectiveness.
Payment is strongly discouraged—it funds criminal operations, provides no guarantee of decryption, and marks you as willing payer for future attacks. Only 57% who pay receive all data back. Many attackers sell data anyway. FBI and CISA recommend against payment. However, some organizations in crisis situations pay as last resort. Decision requires legal counsel, insurance input, and executive approval.
According to Sophos 2024 research, average recovery time is 22 days for organizations that use backups, 28 days overall. Some organizations take months for full restoration. Time depends on backup readiness, attack scope, system complexity, and restoration testing. Organizations with tested recovery plans restore 60-80% faster. Critical systems should be restorable within 24-72 hours to minimize business impact.
Conduct quarterly backup restoration tests (verify data integrity and RTO). Run ransomware attack simulations and tabletop exercises biannually. Perform penetration testing focusing on ransomware attack paths. Test incident response procedures under stress. Validate immutable backup isolation. Measure detection capabilities with adversary simulation tools. Document lessons learned and update controls. Testing reveals gaps before real attacks occur.