What is ransomware readiness?

Ransomware readiness is the ability to prevent an intrusion, limit the damage if one occurs and recover essential operations. Testing access to a critical system is one part of that work: it can expose a route an attacker could use to steal data or interfere with services.

Choose the access that would cause damage

In a Windows environment, Domain Admin is a useful objective because it can give an attacker broad administrative control. It is not a prerequisite for every ransomware incident. An account that can modify a shared folder or manage a backup system can already expose valuable assets.

Pick an objective that reflects your recovery plan: access to the backup server, a critical file share or the directory itself. The question is whether the test can obtain that access from the starting point you specify.

Combine access testing with recovery exercises

A successful route shows how an attacker could reach a named system. Use that evidence alongside backup restoration tests and incident response exercises.

CISA’s StopRansomware Guide covers prevention and response alongside backup and recovery practices.

Use a backup-server result in the recovery plan

Consider a hypothetical test that reaches administrator access on a backup server through a service credential exposed in a shared file. The route gives the system owner a credential exposure and a permission boundary to investigate. It does not establish whether the attacker could alter an offline copy.

Keep the recovery question separate: can the person responsible for recovery restore the required data from a protected copy when that server is unavailable? An isolated restore exercise can answer that question. Preserve both results, including the access test’s starting identity and the copy used for the restore, so that fixing one problem does not hide the other.

Testing the route with AutoAttack

AutoAttack pursues the objective you name without deploying a ransomware encryptor. The report records the route, access gained and objective outcome.

Review the campaign controls and reversible changes before deployment. The ransomware assessment page explains how to frame the campaign, and the benchmark provides lab evidence of the access AutoAttack has achieved.