According to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), ransomware attacks will continue to grow in scale, frequency and sophistication in 2022. Ransomware remains a profitable activity for cybercriminals and ransomware operators will become more aggressive in their targeting while continuing to rely on digital currencies to facilitate their operations.

To prevent and protect against ransomware, CCCS published the Ransomware playbook ITSM.00.099 on November 30, 2021.

This practical document provides an overview of how to defend against cyber threats including key sections on defence plans for backups, incident response and recovery and establishing cyber security controls such as segmenting networks and implementing access controls. Next, the document outlines how to recover from ransomware, including an immediate response checklist covering detection, analysis, containment and eradication steps followed by a recovery process.

Preparing for a ransomware attack and proactively applying measures to protect an organization and its network is a critical factor in enabling an organization to respond to and recover from ransomware.