Unprecedented Threat WannaCry Ransomware 

WannaCry is also known as WannaCrypt WanaCrypt0r 2.0, Wanna Decryptor has affected more than 70 countries in an unprecedented attack which was launched on 12th May 2017. 

Very recently Shadow brokers had leaked the US Spy agencies hacking tools and vulnerabilities and one of them was Eternal Blue exploit which relied on a SMB Exploit to hack into other connected / networked PCs in a network 

It is a common knowledge that when vulnerabilities exist and patches are made available, it is the onus of the Security Administrators to patch up the systems under their control. Microsoft has released the patch MS17-010 way back on 14^th March 2017 to address this security threat and it has been proved beyond doubt that Security Administrators and the entire process of reviewing the laid down procedures for ensuring patch management has taken a severe beating. 

eScan has been proactively protecting its customers from WannaCry Ransomware attacks using its in-house developed PBAE Technology. Moreover all of eScan products have critical patch management which implements the critical security patches; MS17-010 has been provided as an update globally. As a special one-off case, Microsoft has also released the update for XP and 2003 operating systems. 

Also, it has been mentioned in news bulletins about the halt of this Ransomware because of a kill switch, there have also been unconfirmed reports about new variants, which have been released by passing this check. 

Precautions:

• Download and implement MS17-010 patch, which can be found over here https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms17-010.aspx
• Block executable files from being transmitted via eMails.
• Isolate the affected system from your Network.
• Restore the encrypted files from the backup or from system restore point (if enabled).
• Install and Configure eScan with all security modules active.
  • eScan Real Time Monitoring
  • eScan Proactive protection
  • eScan Firewall IDS/IPS Intrusion prevention
• Don't enable macros in documents received as attachments via email.
• Do not open attachments if received from unsolicited source.
• Deploy and maintain a backup solution.
• And last, but most important, protection of Mail server at Gateway Level with Mailscan to prevent delivering of such suspicious emails

The information provided above will help you to protect your system from being victim of Ransomware.