HARTFORD, Conn. — Attorney General William Tong urged businesses to take action in order to prepare against cyberattacks in the wake of an attack that disabled thousands of school websites last week.
Tong's warning comes after the FinalSite ransomware attack impacted thousands of school websites and communications systems nationwide and in Connecticut.
The attorney general urged businesses and government entities to assess their data security practices to protect operations against growing cybersecurity threats.
The Attorney General's office announced a new online form designed to help businesses notify the state officials when they experience a data breach impacting Connecticut residents, as they are obligated to do.
In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russian leader Vladimir Putin to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasn’t been a massive attack like the one that took play in May 2022 that resulted in gasoline shortages across the country.
But the problem hasn’t evaporated, with hackers conducting a barrage of lower-profile episodes that have upended the businesses, governments, schools and hospitals that were hit. U.S. officials have recaptured some ransom payments, cracked down on abuses of cryptocurrency, and made some arrests.
According to Tong, ransomware is a form of malware designed to encrypt files on a device, rendering any files and the systems that rely on them unusable. From a gas pipeline in the south to a company that provides payroll support for other companies, to the Virginia state legislature, the attacks have disabled operations in a wide variety of organizations.
"Cyber criminals demand ransom in exchange for decryption, often threatening to sell or leak exfiltrated information if the ransom is not paid. Ransomware is a growing threat, generating billions of dollars in payments to cybercriminals and inflicting significant damage on businesses and government entities alike," said Tong.
“We are monitoring the FinalSite ransomware attack closely. Right now, there are no reports that student data or personal information has been compromised, which would trigger notification requirements to our office,” said Tong.
Tong listed some best practices for preventing ransomware attacks:
- Implement the five best practices from the President’s Executive Order: The President’s Executive Order on “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity” outlines five high-impact best practices that will significantly reduce the risk of a cyberattack: multifactor authentication (because passwords alone are routinely compromised), endpoint detection and response (to hunt for malicious activity on a network and block it), encryption (so if data is stolen, it is unusable) and a skilled, empowered security team (to patch rapidly, and share and incorporate threat information in your defenses).
- Backup your data, system images, and configurations, regularly test them, and keep the backups offline: Ensure that backups are regularly tested and that they are not connected to the business network, as many ransomware variants try to find and encrypt or delete accessible backups. Maintaining current backups offline is critical because if your network data is encrypted with ransomware, your organization can restore systems.
- Update and patch systems promptly: This includes maintaining the security of operating systems, applications, and firmware, in a timely manner. Consider using a centralized patch management system; use a risk-based assessment strategy to drive your patch management program.
- Test your incident response plan: There is nothing that shows the gaps in plans more than testing them. Run through some core questions and use those to build an incident response plan: Are you able to sustain business operations without access to certain systems? For how long? Would you turn off your manufacturing operations if business systems such as billing were offline?
- Check your security team’s work: Use a third-party penetration tester to test the security of your systems and your ability to defend against a sophisticated attack. Many ransomware criminals are aggressive and sophisticated and will find the equivalent of unlocked doors.
- Segment your networks: There has been a recent shift in ransomware attacks—from stealing data to disrupting operations. It is critically important that your corporate business functions and manufacturing/production operations are separated and that you carefully filter and limit internet access to operational networks, identify links between these networks, and develop workarounds or manual controls to ensure industrial control system (ICS) networks can be isolated and continue operating if your corporate network is compromised. Regularly test contingency plans such as manual controls so that safety critical functions can be maintained during a cyber incident.
- More information can be found here.
Doug Stewart is a digital content producer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dstewart@fox61.com.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.
Note: An earlier version of this story said that the website outage at Manchester Community College was connected to a ransomware attack on their service provider. The outage was unrelated.
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