How to recover from ransomware: A step-by-step guide

You log on as usual. Coffee in hand, you sift through your overnight emails and open the document you were working on yesterday to add that important update. Only you now find yourself locked out. You try your account password, but the screen shakes its head in response. You check that it’s the correct file, but the extension now reads .encrypted.

Your apps won’t open either – missing or corrupted data. Before you can ask your team if they’re having similar issues, messages are pinging in like gunfire to share the same story. The IT guy’s not answering your messages, nor anyone else’s. He’s curled up in a dark corner of the office with his laptop closed, hyperventilating.

It’s finally happened – your business has been hit by a ransomware attack. Maybe it was a phishing email that the intern clicked on. Maybe the CEO downloaded a dodgy link while surfing the web over lunch. All that matters now is how your company responds.

Step 1: Isolate the infection

Your first priority is to stop the spread. Ransomware tends to move laterally across networks, targeting as many additional devices and backups into which it can sink its greasy little fingers.

Here’s what you should do:

• Disconnect infected systems from the network to prevent further encryption.
• Disable shared devices and restrict user access to critical systems.
• Avoid rebooting infected devices – doing so can trigger additional encryption mechanisms.

Step 2: Identify the ransomware variant

To work out the best course of action, you first need to know what type of ransomware you’re dealing with:

• Tools like No More Ransom may be able to decrypt your particular ransomware strain.
• Security teams can analyse ransom notes, file extensions, and system behaviours to detect what type of malware is being used.

Step 3: Assess the damage and restore data

Whatever data has been lost, at least you have a backup, right? But even if you have backed up your data, if it’s not an immutable backup, the hackers may have infiltrated that version as well, rendering it useless.

Once containment is complete, it’s time to evaluate the extent of the attack:

• Determine which systems and files have been encrypted.
• Check if recent backups are available and unaffected.
• Assess whether any sensitive data has been stolen.

If clean backups are available, you can begin the restoration process. This is where having a robust backup and recovery solution is essential. If not, and the data is critical to your operations, you may have to consider paying the ransom.

Step 4: Restore systems securely

Before you can restore your data, you first need to ensure that you’re restoring it to a secure environment. Here’s what that looks like:

• Perform a full security audit to confirm that the ransomware has been removed.
• Patch the vulnerabilities that allowed the attack to occur.
• Reset passwords and strengthen access controls.
• Implement advanced threat detection to prevent reinfection.

Step 5: Strengthen your cyber resilience

Hack me one time, shame on you. Hack me twice, can't put the blame on you. Once recovery is complete, attention should turn to long-term protection. This should include the following:

• Regular data backups stored in immutable, air-gapped, or cloud environments.
• Zero Trust security models to prevent unauthorised entry.
• Automated threat detection and response systems.
• Employee training on cyber awareness and ransomware prevention.

Recover with Redstor

Outdated backup solutions are no better than not having data backup at all. This is because they’re just as likely to end up encrypted as the live versions they’re designed to preserve.

Redstor’s ransomware recovery solutions ensure automated backups that combine rapid response with secure data restoration. Here’s how:

• InstantData™ recovery allows businesses to recover critical data in real time while a full restoration takes place in the background.
• Immutable backups that can’t be altered, encrypted, or deleted.
• Malware detection that scours your backups to identify ransomware threats ahead of time to ensure only clean, uninfected data is preserved.
• Cloud-first, scalable recovery that ensures backups remain accessible even if on-premises infrastructure is compromised.
• Automated disaster recovery and training to guarantee that your recovery strategies can be enacted without manual intervention.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail your customers. Recovering from ransomware requires a proactive approach. While no organisation or cyber security firm can guarantee immunity from cyberattacks, Redstor ensures full recovery. In 24 years, we’ve never lost data.

No company deserves to be held hostage by ransomware. But equally, some can't complain about the consequences when they neglect to protect against this growing threat. Make sure your business isn’t one of them by getting in touch today.