Intermittent Encryption Compels a Smarter Cyber Resilience Strategy

Cybercriminals keep getting smarter, discovering new ways to wreak havoc on businesses and organizations all over the world. It's nearly impossible to read the news without reading an article about a ransomware attack or a cybersecurity incident. Essential services and critical infrastructure are at significant risk from these threats that cost businesses in money and with the aftermath of tarnished reputations.

In light of the new and stronger ransomware variants emerging daily, it is more important than ever to ensure an organization has a robust cyber resilience strategy in place. These variants are increasingly stealthy, making recovery with backups or snapshots expensive and complex. A more sophisticated approach is required to prevent and mitigate these evolving threats.

Over 60% of today’s attacks involve advanced ransomware variants like Chaos, Xorist, Lockfile, and BianLian. These variants constantly evolve, causing subtle corruption that doesn't alter metadata or trigger traditional thresholds. This subtle corruption is better known as intermittent encryption.

Traditional analysis tools, such as metadata inspection, threshold detection, and compression analysis, are often ineffective against these sophisticated variants. These methods, focused on identifying obvious indicators of data compromise, fall short in providing the necessary level of insight for recovery from modern ransomware attacks.

Intermittent Encryption: Modern Ransomware

Intermittent encryption is a technique used by advanced ransomware variants to evade detection and accelerate the encryption process. Unlike more traditional forms of ransomware that encodes entire files, intermittent encryption selectively converts portions of files leaving some parts untouched. This method significantly reduces the time required to encrypt large volumes of data, allowing ransomware to spread more quickly and evade more traditional detection mechanisms.

By only altering parts of a file, intermittent encryption also minimizes changes to file entropy and compression rates, making it harder for standard cybersecurity tools to identify the malicious activity. This technique enables ransomware to operate stealthily, often bypassing security measures that rely on detecting significant changes in file structure or metadata.

The Need for AI in Ransomware Detection

The complexity and covert mechanisms of these relatively new ransomware variants make the integration of artificial intelligence an imperative in cyber resilience strategies. AI can monitor data for actions indicative of ransomware and assess data integrity with a level of sophistication that surpasses traditional methods.

AI-driven systems can make decisions on whether data behavior represents normal user activity or ransomware activity, detecting new variants based on behavior rather than relying on constant updates, signature scans, or patches.

AI's Role in Enhanced Analytics

AI analytics, through the analysis of content, can detect corruption caused by advanced ransomware variants and processes like intermittent encryption. AI can efficiently and quickly harness large amounts of unstructured data, enabling organizations to take immediate action when necessary.

For cybersecurity experts, analyzing vast amounts of unstructured data is a formidable task, but AI systems can swiftly extract relevant information, exposing ransomware corruption and making behavior-based decisions based on how the data changes.

By leveraging AI, businesses can significantly strengthen their defenses against ransomware. AI-enabled systems can analyze data to provide stronger protections and more effective responses to ransomware threats. This proactive approach ensures that businesses, essential services, and critical infrastructure are better protected against the constantly evolving and increasingly sophisticated ransomware attacks.

Ransomware attacks are ever-changing, becoming stealthier and more sophisticated with each iteration. Businesses, essential services, and critical infrastructure must prioritize securing their data as a key weapon in the fight against these threats. AI-enabled systems are the tools that will analyze this data, providing stronger suggested protection and more responsive measures to thwart these ever-evolving ransomware threats.