Scattered Spider: How Certes DPRM Could Have Broken the Attack Chain

Scattered Spider (UNC3944 / Octo Tempest) has recently shifted its target to retail, and the results have been devastating. From multi-week outages to hundreds of millions in revenue loss, their socially engineered ransomware campaigns exploit trust, identity, and weak segmentation. Now the threat is so severe it’s being discussed at national levels. 

But it’s a threat that could have been stopped, not at the perimeter, but at the data layer.

While most organizations scramble to secure endpoints or lock down identities, Certes takes a fundamentally different approach: DPRM (Data Protection & Risk Mitigation) puts protection around the data itself. It ensures that even if attackers breach the network, they get nothing of value.

Let’s break down how Certes DPRM would have neutralized some of the recent retail ransomware attacks, and understand why a new approach to data security is needed

1. Data-Centric Architecture Over Identity-Driven Access

Scattered Spider thrives on social engineering techniques like help-desk impersonation, SIM swapping, and MFA reset scams. Once inside, they abuse trusted remote tools such as TeamViewer, RDP, AnyDesk, to move laterally without raising alerts.

Perimeter defenses don’t stop this. Certes DPRM does.

The DPRM Way: DPRM ensures sensitive data remains protected with Quantum safe encryption, independent of user, device, or network location. Even if attackers log in successfully, what they reach is useless. 

2. Extortion Without Leverage

Scattered Spider’s dual-extortion model exfiltrates sensitive customer data to threaten both encryption and public leaks.

But Certes DPRM removes that leverage.

The DPRM Way: Protected data remains safe and is unreadable even if stolen. Leaked encrypted content provides no monetary or reputational value to attackers. The economics of ransomware collapse when the data itself can’t be weaponized.

3. Privilege Escalation Prevented

Access escalation, often from IT help desks or credential resets, is a critical enabler. But DPRM doesn’t rely on identity.

The DPRM Way: Least-privilege enforcement at the data layer, combined with encrypted segmentation, blocks unauthorized access, even with valid credentials. 

4. Futureproof for Tomorrow’s Threats

With vishing attacks enhanced by AI voice cloning and increasing zero-day exploit use, cyber threat techniques are advancing fast.

Certes DPRM is already ahead.

The DPRM Way: Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is baked in today, meaning your sensitive data won’t be cracked by tomorrow’s quantum computers. And Crypto-agility ensures resilience even as cryptographic standards evolve.

5. Breaking the Ransomware Kill Chain

Even if attackers gain access to the network, DPRM derails ransomware’s core tactics:

• Initial access only leads to encrypted data flows, not open systems. 
• Privilege escalation prevented by segmented, encrypted barriers.
• Exfiltrated files are indecipherable and provide no value to the attackers
• Recovery from backups is safer and faster: attackers like to delete your backups BUT they can’t delete what they can’t access.

How Would Certes’ DPRM Have Prevented Recent Attacks?

Incident	Attack Outcome	DPRM Advantage
Marks & Spencer (April 2025)	£300M loss, 7 weeks of downtime, major logistics disruption via third-party social engineering.	Privilege escalation by compromising the Domain Controller is prevented by DPRM, policies defining encrypted data would remain inaccessible. Master data (inventory, transactions, customer information) would be protected, reducing operational, reputational and financial loss and enabling safer recovery from backups.
Co-op (UK) (April 2025)	Similar to M&S, but Co‑op’s strong detection and network segregation limited disruption. Reverted to paper processes temporarily	DPRM separately encrypts critical dataflows and prevents data leakage even if lateral movement occurred. DPRM protects the data before a breach occurs and does not wait to react.
VMware ESXi Exploits (Retail & Transport, July 2025)	Scattered Spider recently escalated to hypervisor compromise via social engineering, obtaining root access to vCenter, SSH on ESXi, then mass encryption of VMs across data centers within hours	DPRM protects individual virtual machines. Access to vCentre is controlled and only allowed from defined locations. Even full hypervisor compromise yields zero usable data. Recovery time minimized, and extortion leverage nullified.

 

Key DPRM Capabilities That Disrupt Scattered Spider’s Tactics

DPRM Feature	How DPRM Neutralizes Scattered Spider
Data-centric protection	Stolen or encrypted data remains unreadable. There is no value gained by the attackers from data they steal.
Least-privilege access	Credential misuse can’t reach high-value data. DPRM does not use identity to allow data access.
Encrypted segmentation	Lateral movement is blocked at every layer. Individual data flows are cryptographically separated from each other – no way to identify sensitive data and move across the network.
Quantum-safe algorithms	Protection survives future decryption attempts. Quantum Safe encryption is “Forward Secure” preventing the “Harvest now decrypt later” scenario.
Agile key management	Rapid key rotation limits attack window. Keys are changed as often as every hour for each individual data flow under policy.

 

Ransomware Tactics Only Work if the Data Is Valuable

Scattered Spider exploits trust. But once inside, they rely on unprotected data to monetize their attacks.

Certes DPRM shuts that strategy down. Even if they get in, they get nothing. No usable data, which means no leverage, and no payday.

Had DPRM been in place across recent retail breach incidents and their supply chains, ransomware deployment could have been thwarted and its impact reduced to a nuisance rather than a crisis.

The retail sector is on notice. The attackers are watching. And they are coming for your data. The question is, are you ready for the next breach that comes knocking at your systems?