To defend against ransomware threats such as Conti, the HHS publication Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices recommends the following best practices:

• Provide social engineering and phishing training to employees.

• Develop and maintain policy on suspicious emails for end users, and ensure that suspicious emails are reported.

• Ensure emails originating from outside the organization are automatically marked before they are received.

• Apply patches and updates immediately after release/testing, and develop and maintain a patching program, if necessary.

• Implement an intrusion detection system, and keep signatures and rules updated.

• Implement spam filters at the email gateways, and keep signatures and rules updated.

• Block suspicious IP addresses at the firewall, and keep firewall rules updated.

• Implement whitelisting technology to ensure that only authorized software is allowed to execute.

• Implement access control based on the principle of least privilege.

• Implement and maintain anti-malware solutions.

• Conduct system hardening to ensure proper configurations.

• Disable the use of server message block protocol SMBv1 (and all other vulnerable services and protocols), require at least SMBv2, and restrict/minimize/eliminate remote desktop protocol usage.