Concentric extends its data access governance solution to help organizations thwart ransomware attacks

Concentric announced that it has extended its AI-based data access governance solution to help organizations protect business-critical data from the waves of ransomware attacks currently afflicting organizations across the globe.

Semantic Intelligence from Concentric autonomously and continuously profiles data access and usage activities to help organizations prepare for, detect, and recover from ransomware attacks. These industry-first profiling capabilities protect data by bringing three powerful weapons to bear on the ransomware fight: least-privileges access control, in-progress attack detection, and full visibility into the specific content compromised by an attack.

Concentric’s Risk Distance analysis finds and remediates overshared, business-critical data, enabling least-privileges access policies that proactively mitigate damage by limiting what can be accessed and encrypted by a compromised account.

Risk Distance also detects unusual encryption activity and encryption artifacts to alert security professionals when a ransomware attack is in progress, providing comprehensive details about the specific data at risk. After a ransomware event, analysts can refer to Concentric’s detailed insights into file content to easily assess what has – and has not – been impacted by a ransomware event.

“Until now, there was no practical way to control and understand the possible blast radius of a ransomware attack before it occurs,” said Karthik Krishnan, Concentric CEO.

“Enterprises often don’t know what sensitive information they have, who can access it, or whether it’s been compromised. With Semantic Intelligence, security teams now have powerful options to prepare for, respond to, and recover from ransomware attacks. Data governance with Concentric’s unique content insights is the key to better ransomware defenses.”

Concentric’s solution protects data before, during and after an attack. By automating least-privileges data access governance, organizations can harden their data defenses by limiting what a potential attacker can access.

During an attack, Concentric’s data profiling gives security professionals vital information they need to focus on the data most at risk. And when recovering from an attack, an impact assessment from Concentric informs critical recovery decisions, including whether to pay a ransom.