Perplexity Pro vs. Storm-1175 and Medusa: Protect Your SMB Before the Next Breach

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

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

Storm-1175: why this threat changes the game for SMBs 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 correlations. Its playbook is simple and formidable: exploit N-day and zero-day vulnerabilities on web-facing systems, steal data, then deploy Medusa in a double-extortion scheme.

The most alarming point for SMBs 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 monitoring.

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 get a cross-checked summary from reliable sources, far more usable than a simple Google search. You save time on the most critical phase: understanding.

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

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

Based on available information, 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 newly disclosed flaw, then a rapid takeover.

For an SMB, the real challenge is not memorizing CVE numbers. It is understanding which ones affect your systems and which ones 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 forcing you 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 related to each of these services.
3. Rank systems by business criticality and Internet exposure.
4. Create a patch priority based on real risk, not perceived urgency.

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

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

Imagine you are a freelancer managing a client’s e-commerce site, hosting, and backups. You have no SOC, no dedicated analyst, and no time to waste. If a vulnerability 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 can store your notes, recurring questions, reference links, and remediation decisions to instantly recover context when an alert comes in.

Concrete Perplexity Pro Space example

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

The gain is very simple: instead of starting from scratch with every alert, you build on your analysis. For an independent professional, that can save several hours per incident, which is 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 targets systems accessible from the Internet, then follows through with exfiltration and encryption. Several reports also mention disabling protections, including registry modifications and bypassing security mechanisms, to reduce the chances of detection.

This approach is devastating for SMBs without continuous monitoring. Compromise is not always visible immediately, and the first sign may be a ransom note or a data breach alert. Perplexity Pro helps you understand the full attack chain instead of treating each symptom separately.

What you should check first

• Are your web-facing services up to date?
• Are your logs centralized and quickly searchable?
• Are your backups isolated from the production network?
• Can your security tools be disabled without an alert?

At the same time, Perplexity Pro can help you prepare a clear management brief: “here is how the attack works, here is our exposure, here is the potential cost of downtime.” That translation from technical detail to business language is often the missing piece.

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

Medusa does not rely solely on encryption. The group practices double extortion: data theft, threats of publication, then financial pressure. Even if encryption is partial, the risk of leakage is enough to create regulatory, reputational, and commercial impact.

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

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

Google is excellent for finding sources, but then you still need to open, read, and cross-check every result. ChatGPT is convenient for summarizing, 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 especially helpful when you need to answer a question like: “Is this vulnerability already being exploited in the wild?” or “Which environments are affected first?” For an SMB, that 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 the technical side. In a GDPR and nLPD context, a breach notification may be mandatory within 72 hours if data has been compromised. You therefore need to quickly identify what may have been exposed, where the data was stored, and which processors were involved.

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

Express audit to launch right now

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

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

Data sovereignty and backups: Pro Search to verify your resilience

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

Perplexity Pro is useful for comparing hosting options and contractual constraints. For example, you can search for 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, offline, or immutable backups.
• Regular restore tests.
• Admin 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 an operational survival lever.

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

Storm-1175 benefits from organizational slowness. You can reduce that window with automated monitoring: alerts on new CVEs, triage by severity, 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. That gives you a cleaner, better organized flow that is actually usable by a small team.

Good automation practices

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

Be careful not to over-automate, though. An SMB does not need 200 alerts a day; it needs intelligent triage. Perplexity Pro helps turn an avalanche of information into clear priorities.

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

Ransom demands associated with Medusa can range, depending on the case, from $50,000 to $5 million. For an SMB, the real cost often includes much more than the initial demand: business interruption, restoration, forensic expertise, crisis communications, and sometimes penalties or litigation.

By contrast, Perplexity Pro at $79.99/year via PerplexityProDeal represents a minimal cost to document faster, prioritize better, and make decisions with more context. The math is simple: a few hours saved analyzing a vulnerability can be enough to pay for the subscription through a single incident avoided.

The right leadership reflex

1. Measure your real exposure to web-facing systems.
2. Prepare a prioritized patch plan.
3. Test backups and recovery.
4. Formalize 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 sacrificing analytical quality, Perplexity Pro is one of the best everyday work tools.

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

Written by the PerplexityProDeal team