Enhanced Ransomware Readiness and Recovery Strategy for a Global Pharmaceutical Company
Arcova helped global pharmaceutical company assess and bolster their ransomware readiness, resulting in a validated framework and playbook for enhanced response and risk resilience.
Project Information
- Client: Global Pharmaceutical Company
- Services: Adaptive Resilience
- Areas of Expertise: Cyber Resilience, Ransomware Response
- Sector: Life Sciences
Challenge
A global pharmacy company expressed concerns regarding their preparedness to respond to and recover from a ransomware attack. Despite having established cyber defense capabilities, they remained apprehensive about their capacity to uphold data integrity within their environment, recover from data hijacking or destruction, and avert operational disruptions. To address this concern, the company partnered with Arcova to assess their current capabilities for ransomware attack recovery, define actionable requirements to enhance recoverability, strategize for the future state solutions, and develop an implementation roadmap.
Solution
Our approach involved reviewing existing incident response, cybersecurity, cyber resilience, business continuity, and crisis management functions. This included a programmatic and technical assessment of capabilities, covering the recoverability and restoration of structured and unstructured data, as well as virtual server infrastructure (such as virtual machines, machine images, user shares/data, databases, source code, etc.) from ransomware attacks (including encryption and modification).
Additionally, we developed a ransomware response playbook that aligns with broader incident management processes, including escalation to crisis management. Our playbook defines roles and responsibilities, standard response procedures, impact assessment processes, criteria for ransom payment decision-making, guidance tools, and cyber insurance considerations. To validate these capabilities, we conducted an exercise with leadership and key stakeholders, simulating a ransomware attack leading to disruptive operational impacts.
Impact
Our engagement provided the client with a validated framework, playbook, and related resources necessary to respond to a ransomware incident. The playbook offers a consistent process for responding to and recovering from ransomware incidents, improving efficiency in triage and response processes. The simulation exercise also identified opportunities to enhance the response process and revealed gaps in cyber resilience capabilities (specifically, data recovery) and business continuity plans. This led to remediation efforts and an improved risk and resilience posture.
Key Results
Validated Framework And Playbook
Developed a comprehensive ransomware response playbook, aligning with broader incident management processes.
Improved Triage And Response Efficiency
Enhanced efficiency in triage and response processes through standardized procedures and roles.
Enhanced Cyber Resilience
Identified and addressed gaps in cyber resilience capabilities, specifically in data recovery and business continuity plans.
Leadership Simulation Exercise
Conducted a simulation exercise with leadership and key stakeholders, revealing opportunities for process improvement and resilience enhancement.