What is ransomware?
Ransomware encrypts an organization’s data or systems and demands payment, often with double extortion. Most attacks start not with the payload but with an initial access event – a stolen credential or session cookie from a prior infostealer infection, phishing campaign, or breach.
The ransomware kill chain
Prevention depends on seeing the whole chain – most of it happens before encryption, and most of it is addressable with identity intelligence:
- An infostealer harvests credentials and session cookies.
- The data sells as a stealer log.
- An initial access broker resells corporate access to a ransomware affiliate.
- The affiliate authenticates, persists, and moves laterally over days to weeks.
- The payload deploys – the first moment most defenses notice.
Ransomware-as-a-Service industrialized this by splitting payload development from deployment, with the access-broker economy supplying the stolen credentials that make entry cheap and quiet.
How do I check if my organization has exposure that could lead to ransomware?
Run Check Your Exposure to see exposed credentials, malware-infected devices, and stolen session cookies tied to your domain, the same identity exposures attackers use for the initial access that precedes ransomware. Seeing them lets you close the entry points first.
Why credential exposure is the earliest intervention point
The most effective place to break the chain is the first link, long before the payload:
- You get a window. Infostealer exposure typically precedes deployment by weeks to months.
- Act inside it. Force resets, revoke sessions, and isolate the endpoint before the broker completes a sale.
- The warning usually exists. Nearly one in three ransomware victims had a prior infostealer infection on record – and nothing acted on it.
- Convert warning to a closed door. SpyCloud recapture plus automated Ransomware Prevention remediation is built for exactly this.
The business of ransomware and your bottom line
Ransomware monetization has escalated well past simple encryption. Single extortion is the original model – encrypt the data, demand payment for the key – and good backups can defeat it on their own. Double extortion adds data theft before encryption and the threat to publish, which means backups no longer protect you because the leak threat remains. Triple extortion piles on further pressure, through DDoS or by extorting the victim’s own customers and partners directly.
Because every tier begins with the same identity-based initial access, breaking the chain upstream is the one defense that addresses all three at once.
Ransomware starts with exposed access.
See which identities tied to your domain could be the way in.
Frequently Asked
Compromised credentials – stolen via infostealer malware, phishing, or breaches and bought from access brokers. SpyCloud found 54% of victims had employee credentials in infostealer logs beforehand. RDP credentials, VPN tokens, and privileged passwords are the highest-value buys; credential access is cheaper, faster, and quieter than exploiting vulnerabilities.
Yes – it’s one of the most actionable strategies available. Because infostealer exposure precedes deployment by weeks to months, monitoring darknet sources gives a window to reset credentials, revoke sessions, and isolate endpoints before initial access. The data to interrupt the chain usually exists; the gap is acting on it.
Backups help you recover encrypted data, but they don’t prevent the intrusion or the data theft and extortion that now accompany most attacks. Stopping ransomware means breaking the access chain upstream – remediating the stolen credentials and sessions that let the affiliate in before the payload ever runs.