GuidePoint announces Threat Actor Communications Retainer to supplement organization’s IR plan

Cybersecurity solutions vendor GuidePoint Security announced Tuesday the availability of its Threat Actor Communications Retainer. Regardless of the threat actor communications strategy, the retainer is designed to help organizations that have fallen victim to ransomware implement a dynamic, risk-based strategy that allows them to gain investigative knowledge and time for their business and technology teams to recover. 

In scenarios where a customer is considering payment to the threat actor, the retainer also provides negotiation services that focus on risk mitigation, payment reduction, and mutually agreed-upon terms.

The GuidePoint Research and Intelligence Team’s (GRIT) threat actor negotiators are highly-trained cyber threat intelligence analysts with extensive experience in the public and private sectors. 

The Threat Actor Communications Retainer includes effective communication strategies based on profiled threat actor behaviors and GRIT’s collective experiences; gaining an understanding of data at risk and insight into how the threat actor may have operated within the environment; and secures retrieval of data, tools, or other information gathered as a result of communications with the threat actor. 

It also coordinates with legal counsel, insurance personnel, and the incident response investigation, and facilitates all aspects of the threat actor communications process, from start to finish, including cryptocurrency payment, if needed.

The offering rounds out a complete portfolio of ransomware services that GuidePoint Security provides, including incident response planning, IR playbook creation and review, incident response retainers, ransomware tabletops, purple team exercises, ransomware investigation and response, ransomware readiness, business resilience, and data backup and recovery services.

By leveraging the team’s breadth and depth of expertise, GuidePoint Security’s threat actor negotiators understand the challenges organizations face when impacted by ransomware and use knowledge of threat actor operations to craft an effective strategy that maximizes results. GRIT’s ransomware negotiation capabilities have reduced the average ransom demand by 50 percent, with the largest reduction being 85 percent less than the original demand. 

“When an organization is hit by ransomware, that’s obviously a very stressful situation,” Drew Schmitt, GRIT lead analyst at GuidePoint Security, said in a media statement. “In addition to a wide range of ransomware investigation and response services, our team of seasoned negotiators can communicate on a customer’s behalf with threat actors that have stolen and encrypted sensitive information and provide a rapid, risk-informed communication strategy to ensure the best possible outcome for your organization.”

Customers of this offering receive a dedicated hotline that is staffed 24x7x365 for escalation support and defined SLAs for how quickly GRIT negotiators can assist in the effort. “Any unused retainer will convert directly into a Cyber Threat Profile Discovery that performs a point-in-time assessment of your external attack surface, deep and dark web presence, and brand risk, and translates findings into recommendations and threat profiles that identify the threat actors most likely to target your organization,” the company release added.

By having pre-paid access to ransomware negotiators, customers don’t have to worry about finding experienced negotiators while handling an active incident. Instead, customers can rely on retained ransomware negotiators that are familiar with their organization and desired strategy and are always available based on defined SLAs (service level agreements).  

Industrial Cyber News Desk

Industrial Cyber News Desk