As Ransomware Grows, Varonis Offers Free Troy Hunt Course to Increase Employee Education

NEW YORK, May 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Varonis Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNS), a leading provider of software solutions that protect data from insider threats and cyberattacks, today launched “Intro to Ransomware,” a free video training course from security expert Troy Hunt. The online course, created exclusively for Varonis, is designed for anyone from CIOs and CISOs to IT professionals, beginner security engineers and systems administrators – but also provides a strong introduction to any employee. In eight digestible chapters, Hunt describes what Ransomware is and how it works, and presents background on Ransomware’s economics, mechanics, delivery channels, evolution, and preventative measures.

Troy Hunt is a Microsoft Regional Director, MVP for Developer Security, and Author for Pluralsight. He created the data breach service “Have I Been Pwned?” As a leader in online training for technology professionals, Hunt distills complex technology and cybersecurity subjects into relatable explanations.

More information and the full video course can be found here.

In conjunction with the training, Varonis polled more than 100 healthcare IT professionals to gauge the reach of Ransomware in this industry. The overall culled results show that Ransomware is becoming a more prevalent threat vector, targeting and infecting 38% of healthcare IT professionals polled. Of those infected, the biggest change has been to increase security education for employees.

Additional highlights from the healthcare IT survey include:

• 47% of respondents detected their Ransomware hack via a pop-up saying the files had been infected, with only 26% caught by a security technology and 18% noticed by IT personnel.
• 94% had endpoint protection such as anti-virus software in place on the infected workstations.
• 50% had to manually inspect file shares to look for signs of infection to determine which users/systems had been infected and which files had been encrypted.
• Given the recent wave of Ransomware, 15% are reducing employee access based on a need-to-know/least privilege model, while 14% enhanced auditing, analysis and alerting of employee file usage, 12% are investing in other security technologies, and 34% have increased security education for employees.

David Gibson, Vice President of Strategy and Market Development at Varonis, said, “Ransomware is spreading rapidly, which is scary when you consider it is one of the few malwares that makes itself known to the infected end user or system to pay up for the encrypted files. But, what about the other threats constantly infecting systems that don’t raise that alarm? At Varonis, we’re always looking to inform the industry on the latest threats. In addition to our Varonis behavior research laboratory and new threat models, we are delighted to offer this free video training course with Troy Hunt, who covers everything you need to know about Ransomware.”

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About Varonis
Varonis is a leading provider of software solutions that protect data from insider threats and cyberattacks. Through an innovative software platform, Varonis allows organizations to analyze, secure, manage, and migrate their volumes of unstructured data. Varonis specializes in file and email systems that store valuable spreadsheets, word processing documents, presentations, audio and video files, emails, and text. This rapidly growing data often contains an enterprise’s financial information, product plans, strategic initiatives, intellectual property, and confidential employee, customer or patient records. IT and business personnel deploy Varonis software for a variety of use cases, including data security, governance and compliance, user behavior analytics, archiving, search, and file synchronization and sharing. With offices and partners worldwide, Varonis had approximately 4,550 customers as of March 31, 2015, spanning leading firms in financial services, healthcare, public, industrial, insurance, energy and utilities, media and entertainment, consumer and retail, technology and education sectors.

News Media Contact:
Sarah Wheble
CTP
617-412-4000 x 227
Email: swheble@ctpboston.com