As successful cyber threats continue to hit the headlines, organisations in every sector are faced with the risk of more elaborate and deceptive attack strategies.

Take the ongoing problems presented by ransomware, for example, which continue to impose huge costs on businesses that decide to pay with the hope of getting their encrypted data back.

However, a report published by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in the US reveals that in the banking sector alone, “both the number of and total US dollar value for ransomware-related incidents . . . during 2021 far exceeds data for any year.”

In fact, banks processed $1.2 billion in suspected ransomware payments last year – a 188% increase over the year before.

At an organisational level, these issues manifest themselves in a variety of ways. For example, 88% of respondents to our recent industry research said that preventing data damage is one of their top concerns when it comes to protecting data and reacting to threats and attacks. In addition, 72% of IT professionals are concerned about recovering post-attack and minimising downtime.

A major concern across the board is that many IT teams currently don’t have tools in place that can adequately detect ransomware attacks early enough in the process to prevent them from succeeding.

In the same study, only 12% of organisations reported that their ransomware detection tools were adequate and could also cover the growing data estate, regardless of where data lives.

Ransomware and cyber risk, in general, are redefining how organisations must improve their ability to protect their infrastructure and valuable data assets, and, in doing so, reduce business risk.

IT professionals must be one step ahead and invest in proactive technology that improves their resilience. As a result, combining data protection and cybersecurity is the new normal.

In this extremely challenging environment, the current priority for most businesses is to fortify their perimeter defences to prevent intrusions altogether. In particular, a multi-layered approach is needed to comprehensively protect data, not least because backing up alone is not enough, and avoiding being in a recovery scenario is, after all, much more desirable to mitigate business disruption.

The need for deception technology

In order to achieve the strongest security posture to protect data against ransomware attacks, organisations need multi-faceted tools that work across each phase of the attack chain.

Although generally underutilised, modern deception technologies are increasingly playing a critical role in the early detection of invisible and zero-day threats that successfully bypass conventional security tools. But what are these technologies, and how do they work?

Cyber deception is a proactive security strategy that works by deceiving bad actors and malicious attacks. Today’s most advanced cyber deception solutions start where conventional security tools end by using a two-step process to slow down and surface unknown and zero-day threats.

For example, using decoys and threat sensors, bad actors or intrusive malware can be diverted toward convincing but fake assets. At this point, high-fidelity alerts are immediately sent to key stakeholders and security systems, notifying them to the presence of ongoing threats before they can compromise actual systems or data.

Unlike honeypots, which are designed to examine and learn from attackers and their attempts, threat sensors are designed to actively engage bad actors as soon as an attack is initiated.

Utilising an efficient, web service-like architecture, these threat sensors are designed to mimic any user asset, flooding their environments with falsified digital assets that are indistinguishable to attackers. Without impacting normal network operations, they lure attackers in with decoys that divert and trick cyber attackers during recon, discovery, lateral movement, and more.

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And because threat sensors are only visible to the attacker, businesses benefit from extremely precise notifications about false positives, giving them insight into activity, attack paths, and techniques deployed.

This approach enables organisations to deliver a multi-layered defence against threats such as ransomware attacks, arming users with the power to immediately identify and divert malicious threats before data is stolen, damaged, or compromised.

In the current climate, where ransomware has quickly evolved into a massive driver of cybercrime worldwide, it’s clear that existing technologies alone can neither prevent every attack from happening nor ensure victims can quickly recover.

Instead, organisations need to focus on building more effective solutions designed to address the specific risks posed by ransomware and other sophisticated cybercrime tactics.

By using deception as a proactive protection strategy, they can put themselves in a much stronger position to frustrate bad actors before they have the chance to make ransom demands.

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