Yesterday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a crackdown on the use of digital currencies in ransomware attacks and other financial crimes, including its first-ever sanctions against a crypto exchange. In response to the advisory, BreachQuest, a leader in ransomware and cybersecurity readiness and remediation, today announced how they will help clients not only navigate ransomware attacks to successful conclusions, but also avoid potential exposure to regulatory fines by discovering and closing vulnerabilities that lead to future attacks.

"This advisory is really a final warning for companies to get their security operations in order," said Jake Williams, BreachQuest CTO & Co-Founder, "The vast majority of ransomware incidents we respond to were trivially preventable. The Federal Government sees companies facilitating ransomware payments as encouraging future ransomware attacks. With this new advisory organizations may lose the ability to pay attackers to recover, making it even more critical that they do what they can now to ensure they don't suffer a ransomware attack in the first place - and that's where we come in."

The Time for Defense is Now

The Federal advisory directly discourages companies from simply paying the ransom to regain operational control after a successful ransomware attack. Although it can be tempting to take this approach as it seems like the path of ‘least resistance', the ballooning of ransom demands and spiking cyber insurance costs over the past several years is an alarming trend.

"The demand for ransomware payments is increasing," said Shaun Gordon, BreachQuest CEO. "Our extensive team of storied professionals -- with NSA and DoD experience, including U.S. Cyber Command operators -- provide the cybersecurity staff, unique techniques, and cutting-edge expertise that our global clients use to proactively mitigate against such attacks and develop the capabilities to safeguard from future attacks, all while avoiding the OFAC ‘mitigating factors' that often lead to sanctions." 

BreachQuest specializes in global ransomware remediation and readiness that not only helps mitigate the effects from a successful ransomware attack, but also bolster the total infrastructure of an organization to eliminate the potential for future security vulnerabilities and attacks. In tandem with BreachQuest Merger and Acquisition Assessment Services, BreachQuest provides the opportunity for companies to uncover security and compliance pitfalls, allowing them to build a stronger and more mature cybersecurity program.

"We specifically offer trained and experienced consultants that greatly reduce both the stress of an occurring incident and the time it takes to recover to a normal state of operation," said Mark Olsen, Director of Recovery & Remediation at BreachQuest. "Our remediation team bolsters a company's pre-breach policies and procedures before an event by examining an infrastructure for known access points and areas of regress, reducing the likelihood of a client suffering a cyber incident."