BlackBerry Unveils Ransomware Recovery Software to Help Organisations Bounce Back from Cyber Attacks

BlackBerry software promises to help contain attacks by freezing accounts of affected users

BlackBerry has unveiled new ransomware recovery software at the Black Hat security conference this week that, it claims, will help organisations to quickly recover from cyberattacks.

Announced as part of its next-generation BlackBerry Workspaces content collaboration platform, the ransomware recovery feature is said to help contain and limit the damage of ransomware attacks by freezing the accounts of affected users.

Using the software, the administrator can check user logs to pinpoint exactly what workspaces, folders, and files have been affected, and selectively roll affected users, files and folders back to pre-attack versions, without restrictions on how far back it can recover.

The ability to precisely remove just the infected files in this way ought to help organisations avoid the loss of work and productivity that often accompany system-wide recovery mechanisms.

BlackBerry claims that this new tool will prove valuable because ransomware attacks are on the rise, once again, following a period in which cyber attackers tended to focus on propagating crypto-currency miners in order to cash-in on the boom in value of Bitcoin, Monero and other crypto-currencies.

Crypto-currency mining was also seen as lower risk.

"Beyond data loss, opportunity costs, and reputational risks, downtime resulting from ransomware attacks can inflict real harm on customers in any industry, including health care or public safety, where the consequences of any delay can be catastrophic," said BlackBerry's executive vice president of enterprise products, Billy Ho.

"Organisations need to have a strong culture of security in order to minimise the risk of an attack - something that our Cybersecurity Consulting team has been supporting for the last several years.

"In a worst-case scenario, it's critical that organisations also have a layered defense model in place and an enterprise technology stack that is designed with the inevitable breach in mind."

The new ransomware recovery feature will be available in the BlackBerry Workspaces Collaborate and Secure Plus editions at no extra cost. The firm will also be demonstrating the new tech at the 2018 BlackBerrySecurity Summits in London on 12 September and New York on 4 October.

Source: v3