A Threat-Led Approach to Mitigating Ransomware Attacks: Insights from a Comprehensive Analysis of the Ransomware Ecosystem

Ransomware attacks have become a major threat to organizations across all sectors, causing significant financial and reputational damage. To address this challenge, this contribution presents a threat-led approach to mitigating ransomware attacks, based on a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary ransomware ecosystem. The contribution identifies the main ransomware groups that are currently active and analyzes their Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to derive appropriate mitigation measures. The final output of this analysis is a list of mitigations that can effectively prevent the successful execution of ransomware attacks and whose implementation should thus be prioritized by cybersecurity teams. The contribution also highlights the importance of using the MITRE ATT&CK framework and threat actor profile library to enhance ransomware defense strategies. The findings of this contribution have significant implications for cybersecurity practitioners, policymakers, and researchers, and can inform the development of effective ransomware defense strategies.