Ransomware Contained in 45 Minutes — Full Recovery by Next Morning
It was a Friday evening. Files were being encrypted across shared drives. The managing director called us in a panic. Within 45 minutes, we had the attack contained. By Saturday morning, the company was back in business — without paying a single rupee in ransom.
45 min
Time to Contain
100%
Data Recovered
₹0
Ransom Paid
Client Background
A mid-size logistics company based in Kutch, Gujarat, handling import-export documentation and coordination for multiple shipping lines. About 40 staff across two office locations, sharing files on a common network drive. Their IT was managed by a part-time technician who mostly handled printer issues and new user setups.
What Happened
On a Friday at 6:30 PM, an employee opened what looked like a shipping invoice attachment. It was ransomware. Within minutes:
Files on the shared network drive started getting encrypted — hundreds per minute
The ransom note appeared on multiple screens demanding ₹15 lakhs in Bitcoin
Staff panicked and started shutting down computers randomly (some making it worse)
The part-time IT person had no idea what to do
The MD called us at 7:15 PM
Our Response
We kicked off our incident response process immediately:
Connected remotely within 10 minutes of the call
Identified the infected machine (patient zero) by checking network connections and file modification timestamps
Isolated it from the network immediately — pulled the network cable, disabled Wi-Fi
Disconnected the file server from the network to stop further encryption
Verified that the backup server (which we had set up 6 months earlier) was NOT on the same network segment — it was safe
Started full restore of encrypted files from the previous night's backup
Scanned all other machines for indicators of compromise before reconnecting them
By 7:00 AM Saturday — about 12 hours after the attack — all files were restored, all machines were cleaned, and the company was fully operational.
What We Set Up After
Deployed EDR agents on all endpoints — no more relying on basic antivirus
Implemented network segmentation — backup server completely isolated
Set up email security gateway to catch malicious attachments before delivery
Ran a security awareness session for all 40 staff — focused on recognising phishing
Configured automated backup verification with daily alerts
Results
Attack contained within 45 minutes of our involvement
100% data recovered from backups — zero permanent loss
Zero ransom paid — the attackers got nothing
Business fully operational by next morning — minimal revenue impact
No repeat incidents in 8 months since (and counting)
Client Outcome
"When we got hit, I thought we'd lost everything. Nonce Systems responded within the hour on a Friday evening. By Saturday morning we were back up — all files intact, nothing paid. They then set up proper protection so this doesn't happen again. If they hadn't set up that isolated backup 6 months earlier, we would have been finished."