Introduction:

Let’s face it—ransomware isn’t just a buzzword anymore; it’s a business reality. From high-profile attacks on hospitals to cyber criminals targeting supply chains, no organization is immune.  

There were 1,204 confirmed ransomware attacks and 195.4 million compromised records in 2024, according to a recent study by Comparitech. But here’s the good news: you can take proactive steps to improve your defenses and ensure that your organization can withstand even the most determined attacker. Ransomware readiness is about more than just prevention—it’s about preparation, response, and resilience. 

So, buckle up! We’re diving into the top five steps you need to take to prepare your organization for the inevitable ransomware threat (and yes, we’ve kept it simple and actionable). 

1. Identify and Prioritize Critical Assets 

You can’t protect what you don’t know you have. Start by mapping out the crown jewels of your organization—those assets that, if compromised, would cause serious harm. 

Action Items: 

• Perform a comprehensive asset inventory, including servers, databases, endpoints, and cloud resources. 

• Identify critical business processes that depend on these assets. 

• Assign risk levels based on the impact of potential downtime or data loss. 

 Pro Tip: Prioritize assets that house sensitive customer data, intellectual property, or operational systems that are essential to business continuity. 

2. Implement a Zero Trust Security Model

Gone are the days when a strong perimeter defense was enough. With hybrid work and cloud environments, your organization needs a security approach that assumes no one and nothing can be trusted. 

 Core Components of Zero Trust: 

• Least privilege access: Only give users and devices the minimum access they need. 

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Especially for privileged accounts. 

• Network segmentation: Isolate sensitive areas of your network to limit lateral movement. 

3. Continuously Validate Your Security Controls 

You’ve invested in security tools, but are they actually working? Misconfigurations, outdated policies, and evolving threats can all create blind spots in your defenses.  

 Continuous validation ensures you know where your gaps are—before attackers do. 

 What You Should Do: 

• Regularly simulate ransomware attacks using Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) tools like OnDefend’s BlindSPOT. 

• Test your email gateway filter to ensure malicious emails are not reaching employee inboxes and that all anti-spoofing configurations are optimized. 

• Test and validate detection and response capabilities and their mean time to detect (MTTD) across your EDR, SIEM, and XDR platforms. 

• Validate both internal team responses and third-party threat response providers (MDR, MSSPs) and test their mean time to respond (MTTR). 

Dive deeper:  into the hidden risks of security control failures that teams may be missing, read our blog The Hidden Risks of Security Control Failures.

Pro Tip: Testing and validation isn’t a one-and-done activity. Make it part of your ongoing security program to catch changes before they become vulnerabilities using managed services like OnDefend’s Ransomware Defense Validation (RDV). 

4. Backup, Backup, and (Yes) Backup Again

Think of backups as your insurance policy. Even with the best security, breaches can happen. The key is ensuring you have clean, up-to-date backups that you can rely on during recovery. 

Best Practices for Backups: 

• Maintain **3-2-1 backup strategy**: 3 copies of your data, on 2 different media, with 1 copy offsite. 

• Test backups regularly to ensure they’re functional and uncorrupted. 

• Secure backups using encryption and restrict access. 

Fun Fact: Backups are a favorite target of ransomware attackers. 96% of ransomware attacks targeted backup repositories. Make sure yours are protected and isolated from the production network. 

5. Develop and Test a Ransomware Response Plan

 Let’s be honest—when ransomware hits, you don’t want to be scrambling to figure out what to do. A well-documented and tested response plan can mean the difference between a contained incident and a full-blown crisis. 

 What Your Plan Should Cover: 

• Incident detection and initial response protocols. 

• Clear roles and responsibilities for internal teams and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and Network Detection and Response (NDR) partners. 

• Communication plans for notifying stakeholders, customers, and regulatory bodies. 

• Post-incident recovery and lessons-learned processes. 

 Pro Tip: OnDefend’s Ransomware Defense Validation (RDV) services will simulate a real-world attack to test your incident detection and response protocols and determine if your response teams are optimally functioning.   

Conclusion:  

Ransomware readiness isn’t a checkbox; it’s an ongoing process. By taking these five steps, you’ll be well on your way to building a resilient organization that can prevent, detect, and respond to ransomware threats with confidence. Don’t wait until you’re in the middle of an attack to realize you weren’t ready. Start today, iterate, and continuously improve. 

Oh, and one last thing: Reach out to us here if you need help validating your defenses or simulating real-world ransomware attacks. We’ve got your back (and your backups!).