Tag: ransomware

An IP law firm was hit by ransomware despite having “the right tools.” This real-world case shows why antivirus isn’t enough, and how deception-based controls stopped attacks from working. We remember one of the first cybersecurity projects that truly stayed with us.

It was early 2023. An IP law firm had just been hit by a ransomware attack.

They already had antivirus in place, the “right” security tools and it still didn’t matter. Systems were down. Work stopped. And honestly, the biggest damage wasn’t technical.

It was confidence.

People were exhausted. Clients were untrusting. Reputation was taking hits while the website and internal systems were offline.

Why Antivirus Wasn’t Enough Against Ransomware

When we got involved, the instinct wasn’t to pile on more tools.

The problem wasn’t a missing checkbox or another endpoint agent. The real issue was how easy it still was for a single mistake to turn into a full-scale ransomware incident.

That’s a common failure in traditional cybersecurity for law firms — prevention works only when everyone behaves perfectly.

Recovering from the Ransomware Attack

The first priority was recovery.

We helped restore critical databases. In some cases, the last usable backups were three months old — stored on the same server that had been compromised.

Once operations were stabilized, we changed the environment entirely.

Designing Security That Assumes Human Error

Instead of expecting perfect behavior, we assumed mistakes would happen.

We deployed endpoint deception technology, putting traps and controls in place that made attacker movement visible and contained. The goal wasn’t to stop every attempt — it was to make attacks fail safely.

At the same time, the firm was in the middle of a system migration, which is usually when security gets worse if it’s not handled carefully.

This time, it didn’t.

Why the Attacks Stopped Working

Since that rollout, there haven’t been any successful attacks.

Not because threats disappeared — but because the attacks stopped working.

That project reshaped how I think about ransomware protection and cyber resilience.

If a security solution only works when people never make mistakes, it doesn’t really work.