Recovering from ransomware attacks is a commitment. Ivan Gento Pariente, International Marketing Manager Synologyoutlines the 7 key elements of an effective ransomware recovery plan.
In recent years, ransomware attacks have intensified and evolved to become a business model. Thus causing severe damage across industries and resulting in significant loss of data and assets to organisations.
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The 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report revealed staggering data, with a total of 6.233 billion ransomware attacks reported globally in 2022 which equates to an average of 19 attacks per second. This trend highlights the urgent need for companies to strengthen their defenses. Having a ransomware recovery plan is crucial because it can minimize theimpact of an attack and encourage the restart of activities in the shortest possible time.
Prioritize recovery
However, experience shows that no organization can completely prevent all cyber attacks. For this reason, companies must prioritize “recovery.” This is why “backup” is unanimously recognized as one of the most effective defenses against ransomware attacks: being able to rely on recent, safe and verified backups increases the chances of successful recovery, reducing downtime and the risk of data loss.
The main elements of a ransomware recovery plan
Ransomware attacks represent one of the most challenging recovery scenarios for any organization. Here are the key elements of an effective ransomware recovery plan:
No more data silos. Thanks to recent technological advances, the tools companies use for development and production span multiple platforms. Neglecting certain workloads puts your organization at risk of ransomware attacks. Therefore, in terms of backup, it is crucial to avoid silos and include all data in a comprehensive copy mechanism.
Efficient and fast backups. With the rapid growth of enterprise data, it just doesn’t have to be preserved for subsequent analysis, but can be transferred to the cloud or applied to IoT devices. As a result, the amount of data that needs to be backed up in the organizational environment is likely to increase. For this reason, companies need a system that can do this efficiently and quickly, even when data has been fully backed up.
Backup data storage. Modern ransomware has a latency period ranging from 30 to 90 days. Therefore, backup data must be stored effectively and securely to deal with any unforeseen events, ensuring restoreable copies to maintain the continuity of company operations.
Tamper-proof data
Backup recoverability test. Since companies cannot predict when they will fall victim to ransomware attacks, it is necessary to conduct continuous tests and exercises on the actual recoverability of backup data. This helps increase the credibility of backups. It also ensures that the organization can operate properly and recover quickly in case of ransomware threats.
The 7 Elements of an Effective Ransomware Recovery Plan
Inaccessibility of the backup architecture. The most common ransomware attack methods involve encryption of an organization’s original data and the simultaneous deletion of backup data. Therefore, the latter must be characterized by high security, be tamper-proof and have the ability to isolate ransomware directly in the network or physical environments.
Time and flexibility
Fast recovery e resilient. When organizations are hit by ransomware attacks, the primary goal is to ensure continuity of operations. Which involves two critical elements, time and flexibility. To minimize downtime, you need to achieve immediate recovery and shorten your Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Additionally, because ransomware often targets a single platform, backups must have cross-platform and cross-hypervisor restore capabilities.
Centralized and easy-to-use management. The complexity of enterprise IT environments is increasing. Although most companies use protection mechanisms natives for backups, the high complexity of management can lead to human errors or oversights. Which represents a further vulnerability. For this reason, backups must be managed centrally and offer a visibility complete with data to ensure normal operation.
How Synology Helps Organizations Implement Ransomware Recovery Plans
Synology’s data protection solutions offer essential elements to help businesses fight ransomware. They safeguard company data, ensure backup security and facilitate effective recovery. This creates a complete data protection solution for businesses.
Data protection
Centralized cross-platform backup: Provides centralized protection for data across multiple platforms, including your organization’s core infrastructure and cloud applications. Thus ensuring the protection of data across the entire ecosystem. They satisfy the 3-2-1 backup rule. Data can be backed up to multiple destinations, such as replica on off-site backup servers or cloud storage. This ensures the availability of the backup data. The 7 Elements of an Effective Ransomware Recovery Plan
Backup security
Data immutability: Support backups immutable to prevent unauthorized modifications or deletions. They help protect enterprise backup data from the impact of ransomware and other malicious attacks. Approach Air-Gap. They ensure that the environment in which the backup is deployed can be logically isolated from potential ransomware attacks.
Access control. They support Active Directory and LDAP, as well as SAML 2.0. Thus allowing organizations to implement multi-factor authentication to improve the security of access to the backup server.
Different recovery methods
Data recovery
Regular recovery tests. They allow companies to regularly restore data to the integrated hypervisor for testing in a sandbox environment. This approach allows you to make recovery exercises without affecting operational sites, ensuring data recoverability.
They support different recovery methods. They offer diverse and flexible recovery modes, including bare-metal file-level and database recovery. This allows companies to choose the most suitable recovery method based on their specific needs.
They allow you to recover from different and heterogeneous platforms. In the event of an incident, real-time recovery can be achieved in environments virtual VMware or Hyper-V. You can quickly launch backup images into these virtual environments, meeting requirements for cross-platform recovery, including P2V and V2V. The 7 Elements of an Effective Ransomware Recovery Plan
The deep one evolution of the threat landscape, which has seen ransomware emerge even more prominently than in the past, has helped bring data protection and business continuity to the top of corporate priorities. Synology’s data protection solution adheres to the best practices listed above. In this way it contributes to to define an optimal ransomware recovery plan that helps businesses achieve uninterrupted operations.