Worried About Ransomware? Resilience & Recovery are the Name of the Game

Ransomware attacks are evolving rapidly. Recent high-profile incidents highlight how attackers are outsmarting organizations and why businesses must focus as much on modern resiliency and recovery strategies as they do on standard prevention tactics. 

Recently, this point has been driven home by Scattered Spider—a cybercrime group that has been able to infiltrate some of the most well-known companies in insurance, entertainment and retail across two continents. 

This group first gained notoriety in the US after breaching Caesars and MGM casinos. Their approach was simple: pure social engineering. Instead of breaking down firewalls, attackers exploit human behavior. In the MGM breach, attackers impersonated internal employees, convinced help desk staff to reset credentials and multi-factor authentication and gained access without ever launching a traditional exploit.  

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, the UK retail sector was hit by comparable tactics. Attackers used AI-generated phishing content and social media reconnaissance to impersonate senior leadership and gain access through SIM swaps and domain spoofing. 

The Flaws in Traditional Cybersecurity Postures 

Scattered Spider's success hinges not on advanced malware or zero-day exploits but on two factors—the vulnerabilities of human behavior and the failure to legacy tools to keep up with modern attack speeds. 

Despite millions invested in security tools and years of phishing awareness campaigns, employees remain the single most exploited vulnerability of the organization, with an estimated 91% of ransomware incidents beginning with a phishing attack.  

Many companies fall into one of two extremes: some enforce strict training and even tie security awareness to performance metrics, while others avoid “upsetting employees” and leave their digital doors wide open.  

And when it comes to legacy response tools, they are often too slow to react due to manual overrides and incomplete rule sets. In some cases this can lead to embarrassing recovery. For example, Erie Insurance remained offline for weeks with no access even to their login page while incident response experts attempted to unpack and mitigate the damage.  

Building a Ransomware Resiliency Assessment 

So how can organizations fight back again modern ransomware threats? One important tool is a comprehensive Ransomware Resiliency Assessment—a framework that goes beyond firewalls and focuses on behavior, recovery and real-world readiness. 

Key components should include: 

• Behavioral Testing: Simulated phishing attacks, especially those mimicking real-world scenarios. 

• Access Control Reviews: Evaluate MFA protocols and limit admin rights through just-in-time access 

• Endpoint Response Audits: Ensure EDR tools are allowed to take automated action when threats are detected 

• Disaster Recovery Readiness: Test RTO (Recovery Time Objectives) and RPO (Recovery Point Objectives) with routine tabletop exercises 

• Tabletop Scenarios: Simulate full-blown ransomware events including spoofed IT tickets and impersonation tactics 

At Inversion6, we recommend designing tabletop exercises based on actual events from the news—including the recent Scattered Spider tactics—to expose critical weaknesses in identity and domain security. 

But resiliency is only half the battle. Organizations must plan for failure—and more importantly, plan to recover. A strong disaster recovery/business continuity plan ensures services can be restored quickly, reducing downtime and limiting damage. 

For most organizations, this will require multi-pronged strategy, including: 

• Regular phishing simulations and reward users for reporting threats 

• IR tabletop exercises based on known attack models 

• Hardened identity infrastructure with MFA, behavioral analytics and SIM swap protection 

• Security tools trusted to take decisive action without manual overrides 

• Well-maintained and regularly tested backups with clear restoration protocols 

Scattered Spider’s rise underscores a chilling reality: ransomware isn’t just a tech problem—it’s a people problem. The line between cybersecurity and operational stability is thinner than ever.  

Could your business withstand a Scattered Spider-style attack today? 

If you’re unsure, let Inversion6 help you find out.  

Our ransomware resiliency assessments are based on real world attack playbooks and designed to provide executive-level visibility and operational alignment. 

Schedule one today to see how your organization would hold up in the face of the next big threat.