Adoption of data-driven business models to increase agility, the rise in remote working and the growing sophistication and prevalence of ransomware attacks has made ransomware defence a priority for organisations of all shapes and sizes and across every industry.
As data becomes more lucrative for attackers, the threat to organisations increases. Having strong defences is vital if organisations are to avoid being compromised, but a piece meal approach isn’t good enough. Today, ransomware defence needs a holistic approach.
Advanced ransomware attacks are targeting backups to modify, encrypt or completely wipe them to make it harder for the victim organisation to recover from an attack and be left with little option than to pay the ransom. But even if your organisation pays the ransom, there is no guarantee that your data will be returned in its entirety or at all.
As the old saying goes, prevention is better than cure and this is certainly true when it comes to ransomware attacks. Taking a holistic approach to your ransomware defence can help ensure your security defences are robust and your backups are safe.
The challenges of protecting data
A surge in malicious attacks drives home the importance of protecting sensitive data from loss, theft and corruption. But protecting data effectively is a challenge that many organisations need to overcome.
Huge volumes of data combined with complex IT infrastructures significantly increase security challenges. The vast amount of new and historic data that must be stored means many organisations rely on multiple storage types and locations, which can further increase the attack surface.
Taking a holistic approach to ransomware defence
A holistic approach to ransomware defence encompasses cyber security, secure backups, disaster recovery and actionable remediation plans to ensure an effective line of defence and avoid having to pay a ransom.
MTI partner Rubrik deliver a single, policy-driven platform for data recovery, governance, compliance and cloud mobility. Rubrik’s approach and architecture ensure that all applications and data is stored in an immutable format to prevent ransomware from ever accessing and encrypting backups. A holistic ransomware defence should include:
Multi-layered defences
As ransomware continues to grow in sophistication, so does the length of time it takes to detect, and delayed detection can impact on the integrity of backup and recovery data. Modern technologies that leverage machine learning use deep analysis of filesystems and content behaviour to detect security threats.
Using machine learning combined with real-time detection and prevention tools, as well as multi-factor authentication and zero-trust design can help you create a multi-layered defence to reduce any vulnerabilities in your security posture.
Native immutable filesystem
Backups are without a doubt your best chance of recovering from a ransomware attack, but not if they have been compromised. Immutable backups are essential for your ransomware defences as they guarantee that no external client can read, modify or delete data once it has been ingested.
Backup data should never be available in read/write mode to an external client, if it is it leaves the door open for that data to be corrupted or deleted by malicious threat actors. Rubrik’s filesystem was built from scratch to be immutable to ensure that backups cannot be encrypted or deleted by ransomware.
Disaster recovery
Should the worst happen, and your organisation falls victim to a ransomware attack then fast and effective recovery is vital. Not only can the unplanned downtime associated with of a serious security incident have a financial impact on your organisation, but a data breach can damage your reputation and destroy customer trust – which can take years to recover from.
Being equipped with the tools to quickly restore the most recent and clean version of your data through backups can limit the downtime and damage to your organisation.
Backup data should be immediately available and enable you to instantly recover without any rehydration required. Additionally, leveraging automation via APIs allows greater flexibility when restoring and can speed up search and recovery at a large scale.
Do you have a robust ransomware remediation plan?
Backups are one of the most crucial defences against ransomware and your ability to recover quickly and effectively should you be compromised. But organisations must develop a robust remediation plan to ensure they have the right processes in place and a strong plan to lead them on their road to recovery.
Contact us to discover what to look for in a backup and recovery solution, the technical requirements of a secure architecture and how to construct your remediation plan to ensure it is robust.