Attacks are now occurring every 11 seconds, and demand for payments continues its upward trend with backup environments becoming the main target. However, criminals focus on methods to disable your recovery mechanisms. Successful ransomware attacks can take several days or even months to fully recover. Especially true when targeted campaigns wipe out clusters of servers. There is no solution to this problem. Therefore, the only thing you can do is rebuild. To save your business from these ransomware attacks, always perform ransomware recovery.
The world of data protection solutions is noisy with various vendors’ promises about preventing, detecting, and recovering from ransomware attacks. Many companies are now using data protection services to make their business more secure and more functional. Using advanced security, companies can easily improve their infrastructure security.
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts your files. The user must pay an attacker a ransom in return for restoring access to your data. As there’s no guarantee that a perpetrator will honor the terms of the ransom. Therefore, preventing ransomware through cybersecurity best practices and routine snapshots is your best option. Many companies are now using cyber security solutions to make themes safe from these cyberattacks.
Why is Ransomware Recovery Important?
Many companies were able to coast through for years without having to think much about catastrophic data loss. However, They may update an antivirus software program and tighten up a firewall here and there, but not anymore. It’s a reality that even with what would be considered strong antivirus and firewall tools and employee cyber safety policies in place. Ransomware is still finding its way to infect databases across the land. Having a robust disaster recovery plan is the key.
Steps to Improve Your Last Line Of Defense
If the data backup is breached, the attacker may be able to stop backup operations, infect and encrypt the backup data, or possibly completely delete the data. In addition, the backup system can provide the cybercriminal with a ‘roadmap’ of sorts to where critical data is stored on the network so they can expand their attack and make their ransom demands more compelling.
Encrypt Data in Motion And at Rest
Encrypting your backup data adds another layer of abstraction and security, that when combined with deduplication and compression, will make it nearly impossible for attackers to read and know what’s in your data repository. In addition, protect your data in motion with SSL encryption or with the use of proprietary protocols.
Create Physical Air Gaps Between Copies of Your Data
It makes it virtually impossible for an attacker to penetrate. When you backup data off-site or on systems that are not connected to your network, you have established a physical ‘air gap’ between the copies of your backups. Physical air gaps between the copies of your backup data make it much, much harder for a cybercriminal to infect all copies of your backup data.
Limit Access To The Backup Software
It is always a ransomware recovery best practice to limit access to the backup console and repositories. To accomplish this, you should consider creating more than one backup admin role and assigning non-overlapping privileges and responsibilities to each role. For instance, you could assign backup job creation, retention policies, and reporting to different admins.
Use Multifactor Authentication (MFA) for Admin Accounts
If you’re not already using MFA for your admin accounts, you should implement it as soon as possible. If an attacker breaches the backup console, they can change policies and jobs, and even delete data from your system. This applies to your backup repositories as well if they reside on systems separate from the console. You can also use advanced security to make your business more secure than your competitors.
Harden the Data Backup With Immutable Storage
Another measure vital to your ransomware recovery capabilities is to place a copy of your backup data into immutable storage. Immutable storage, or WORM (write-once-read-many) storage, uses media that prevents the data from ever being changed or erased unless you have pre-specified a deletion date based on your retention policy. Once data is written to it, the original data cannot be deleted or encrypted by ransomware. Using cyber security solutions you can make your business more secure.
Final Thoughts
Ransomware attacks are only increasing. How you prepare to prevent, detect and recover from them will be crucial to the success of your organization. Now is the time to fortify the core of your ransomware recovery capabilities – your backup system – the last line of defense against one of the costliest threats your organization will face.
