Perplexity Pro versus Storm-1175 and Medusa: protecting your SME before the next breach

The new Storm-1175 group illustrates a harsh reality: cybercriminals are no longer limited to opportunistic attacks, they are industrialising the exploitation of vulnerabilities to deliver Medusa ransomware within hours. For an SME, this means that an exposed server, a poorly patched MFT tool or an forgotten web portal can become a critical entry point before your team has even finished its morning meeting.

In this context, Perplexity Pro becomes a highly practical ally. With Pro Search and Deep Research, you can quickly verify which CVEs are active, compare vendor guidance and build a remediation priority instead of navigating blindly through alerts, tweets and security bulletins.

Storm-1175: why this threat changes the game for SMEs with Pro Search

Storm-1175 is a financially motivated group, described by several sources as potentially linked to Russian or Chinese origins based on available cross-checks. Its modus operandi is simple and formidable: exploit N-day and zero-day vulnerabilities on web-facing systems, steal data, then deploy Medusa in a double-extortion model.

The most worrying point for SMEs is not only the technical sophistication. It is the speed. Observed campaigns show exploitation sometimes within 24 hours of a flaw being disclosed, leaving very little room for a team without automated threat intelligence.

What Perplexity Pro helps you do immediately

With Perplexity Pro, you can ask a targeted question such as: “Which recently published CVEs affect my Internet-facing tools?” and receive a cross-sourced summary from reliable references, far more usable than a simple Google search. You save time on the most critical phase: understanding.

• Identify CVEs that are genuinely exploitable on your exposed services.
• Compare the priorities set by vendors, CERTs and researchers.
• Summarise business risk for a management meeting in 5 minutes.

The vulnerabilities being exploited: Deep Research to separate noise from danger

According to the information available, Storm-1175 has exploited more than 16 CVEs since 2023, including CVE-2025-31161 on CrushFTP, CVE-2025-10035 on GoAnywhere MFT and CVE-2025-52691 on SmarterMail. The pattern is recurring: an exposed service, a freshly published flaw, then rapid takeover.

For an SME, the real challenge is not memorising CVE numbers. It is understanding which ones affect your systems and which should trigger an immediate patch, a temporary shutdown or stronger logging. Deep Research in Perplexity Pro is useful here, because it lets you consolidate information from multiple sources without having to open ten tabs.

30-minute action plan with Perplexity Pro

1. List your exposed services: MFT, email, VPN, customer portals, web servers.
2. Ask Perplexity Pro to identify recent CVEs linked to each of these services.
3. Rank systems by business criticality and Internet exposure.
4. Create a patching priority based on real risk, not perceived urgency.

The limitation remains important: Perplexity Pro does not replace a vulnerability scan or an EDR. However, it greatly accelerates the analysis phase and saves you from losing a day cross-referencing contradictory articles.

If you are a freelancer or solo founder: use Spaces for your mini security watch

Imagine you are a freelancer managing a client’s e-commerce site, hosting and backups. You have neither a SOC, nor a dedicated analyst, nor time to waste. If a flaw affects your stack, you need to decide quickly: patch, monitor, isolate or communicate.

With Spaces in Perplexity Pro, you can create a dedicated space for that client or for your own infrastructure. You store your notes, recurring questions, reference links and remediation decisions there so you can instantly retrieve the context when an alert appears.

Concrete Perplexity Pro Space example

• A “Client X Security” Space with exposed tools and their versions.
• A “Critical CVEs 2026” Space to track alerts.
• A “Incident Response” Space with communication and escalation checklists.

The benefit is simple: instead of starting from scratch with every alert, you build on your analysis. For an independent professional, this can save several hours per incident, often worth far more than the annual subscription cost.

Why Storm-1175 targets exposed systems so effectively: Pro Search to understand the tactic

Storm-1175 first attacks systems accessible from the Internet, then proceeds to exfiltration and encryption. Several reports also mention disabling protections, including through registry changes and bypassing security mechanisms, in order to reduce the chance of detection.

This approach is formidable for SMEs without continuous monitoring. The compromise is not always immediately visible, and the first sign may be a ransom demand or a data leak alert. Perplexity Pro helps you understand the full attack chain, rather than dealing with each symptom separately.

What you should check first

• Are your web-facing services up to date?
• Are your logs centralised and quickly accessible?
• Are your backups isolated from the production network?
• Can your security tools be disabled without alerting anyone?

In parallel, Perplexity Pro can help prepare a clear management brief: “this is how the attack works, this is our exposure, this is the potential cost of downtime.” Translating technical issues into business language is often the biggest gap.

Medusa and double extortion: Deep Research to assess the real cost of risk

Medusa is not based solely on encryption. The group uses double extortion: data theft, threat of publication, then financial pressure. Even if encryption is partial, the risk of a leak is enough to create regulatory, reputational and commercial impact.

Publicly cited victims include large healthcare organisations, local authorities and service providers. Reported cases mention around 400 documented victims and 35 closed clinics, which clearly shows the systemic effect of this type of campaign.

Comparing with ChatGPT and Google: where Perplexity Pro has the edge

Google is excellent for finding sources, but you then have to open, read and cross-check each result. ChatGPT is useful for synthesis, but it can lack transparency if you want to quickly verify the origin of a cybersecurity fact.

Perplexity Pro combines search and synthesis with usable citations, which is particularly helpful when you need to answer a question such as: “Is this flaw already being exploited in the wild?” or “Which environments are affected first?”. For an SME, this difference translates into faster decisions and less noise.

GDPR and nLPD compliance: Spaces to prepare your post-incident file

If personal data is involved, compliance is not limited to technical measures. In a GDPR and nLPD context, breach notification may be mandatory within 72 hours if data has been compromised. You therefore need to be able to quickly identify what may have been exfiltrated, where the data was stored and which processors were involved.

With Perplexity Pro, you can organise your entire compliance file in a Space: data inventory, processing agreements, hosting evidence, incident response plan and notification obligations. This reduces the risk of forgetting something at the moment when pressure is at its highest.

Express audit to launch right now

1. Identify the personal data present on exposed services.
2. Check your contracts with hosting providers and suppliers.
3. Confirm the existence of a DPA and an incident plan.
4. Document your patching decisions and containment measures.

The limitation here is straightforward: Perplexity Pro will not write your report to the CNIL or the relevant authority for you. But it helps you prepare a far more complete dossier, much faster.

Data sovereignty and backups: Pro Search to verify your resilience

In this type of threat, a backup that simply “exists” is not enough. It must be isolated, restorable and hosted in a zone that is consistent with your obligations. For SMEs in Europe or Switzerland, this means checking whether backups and the recovery plan are compatible with an EU/CH approach, rather than simply being scattered across multiple clouds without clear governance.

Perplexity Pro is useful for comparing hosting options and contractual constraints. For example, you can search the sovereignty differences between OVH, Scaleway, Exoscale or other providers, then decide more confidently where to place your backups and recovery environments.

Resilience checklist to validate

• Encrypted backups that are offline or immutable.
• Regular restoration tests.
• Administrator access separated from production.
• Documented and tested failover plan.

In practice, many incidents become manageable when restoration is fast. Without that, the ransom is no longer just a threat, it becomes a lever for operational survival.

Automate without making mistakes: Spaces and CVE monitoring with n8n or Make

Storm-1175 benefits from organisational slowness. You can reduce this window with automated monitoring: alerts for new CVEs, filtering by criticality, then escalation to the relevant team. Perplexity Pro can serve as a knowledge base to define keywords, critical services and priority criteria.

If you use n8n or Make, create workflows that monitor security sources and then feed relevant alerts into a Perplexity Pro Space. This gives you a cleaner, better categorised flow that is especially useful for a small team.

Good automation practice

• Trigger an alert only for CVEs that affect your software.
• Send critical incidents to a dedicated channel.
• Keep a record of decisions in a Space.

However, be careful not to over-automate. An SME does not need 200 alerts per day; it needs intelligent filtering. Perplexity Pro helps turn an avalanche of information into clear priorities.

How much does inaction cost against Storm-1175? Deep Research to talk ROI

Ransoms associated with Medusa can range, depending on the case, from $50,000 to $5 million. For an SME, the real cost often includes far more than the initial demand: business interruption, recovery, forensic expertise, crisis communication, and sometimes penalties or litigation.

By contrast, Perplexity Pro at $79.99/year via PerplexityProDeal is a minimal cost for documenting faster, prioritising better and making decisions with more context. The calculation is simple: a few hours saved on breach analysis can be enough to make the subscription worthwhile for a single incident avoided.

The right management reflex

1. Measure your real exposure to web-facing systems.
2. Prepare a prioritised patching plan.
3. Test backups and recovery.
4. Formalise post-incident compliance with Perplexity Pro.

The lesson from Storm-1175 is clear: in cybersecurity, speed matters as much as technology. And to move faster without losing analytical quality, Perplexity Pro is one of the best everyday work tools.

Ready to switch to Perplexity Pro? Take advantage of the offer at $79.99/year instead of $200 on PerplexityProDeal.com — activation in under 24 hours.

Written by the PerplexityProDeal team