World Backup Day: Pure Storage explains how to protect valuable business data from pervasive, ever-evolving ransomware threats.
In a historical period that sees companies increasingly oriented towards one approach data-driven, the importance of protecting data to prevent loss, corruption and theft becomes a priority for business managers. Ransomware, which is capable of locking data with unbreakable encryption rendering it unusable, represents one of the most common forms of malware today, which is a major threat and cause of data loss. Most ransomware attacks involve the theft of sensitive personal or business data for the purpose of extortionthus increasing the cost and complexity of the incident, as well as potentially causing reputational damage.
The year 2023 was marked by a persistent escalation of cyber threats, and ransomware payout cases surpassed $1 billion, the highest number ever observed. Furthermore, new regulations require greater operational resilience and therefore faster recovery times in the event of a disaster, including due to ransomware attacks. World Backup Day which occurs on March 31st serves to remind us of the extreme importance of creating effective copies of data, having recovery strategies and protection protocols. Effective backup solutions can help mitigate the risk of data loss and significantly speed up data recovery.
Downtime is the biggest nightmare for modern businesses
Downtime is the most costly aspect of a ransomware attack, as any disruption can have disastrous financial and reputational consequences. According to Statista, the average downtime of a company after a cyber attack is approximately 22 days, which is truly worrying. Furthermore, according to recent ESG research, nine out of ten respondents said that within the second hour of a data loss their organization begins to suffer a significant negative impact. Given the risk businesses face due to downtime due to ransomware attacks, it is critical that organizations adopt technologies and processes to protect themselves. How can they do it?
Safeguard data to protect your business
Backup remains a critical activity for data protection, but it is not enough. Implementing advanced data protection features helps businesses plan better and recover quickly from ransomware and cyber attacks. This essentially requires a two-pronged approach: regularly making “immutable copies” of your data and having the infrastructure needed to quickly restore data from backups at speed and at scale.
In the event of a cyber attack or any other event that compromises data or disrupts operations, companies can recover critical data from its immutable copies, so they can quickly restore operations without having to succumb to the demands of cybercriminals. Adequate immutability means that these copies cannot be encrypted or even deleted by cyber criminals. Their modification or frequency of use is protected by multi-factor authentication and therefore safe from hackers. This makes them much more resistant and reliable in the event of a cyber attack.
Then there’s the ability to restore data as quickly as possible, as backups have limited effectiveness if operations can’t be quickly restored. Some of the most advanced flash-based storage solutions can significantly increase the speed of data recovery. Leading solutions boast recovery performance of up to many hundreds of TeraByte per hour at scale, allowing organizations to restore systems in hours, rather than weeks, so they can be back up and running with minimal impact.
The ability to quickly restore critical services is quickly becoming mandatory in some regulated industries. For example, European legislation DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is aimed at requiring that critical banking systems be restored in less than 2 hours in the event of a disaster, which is very difficult to achieve with data protection solutions that were never designed with rapid restore in mind. We are likely to see more countries and sectors mandating the rapid restoration of critical services.
Ransomware recovery SLAs are now part of the solution
Data protection should be the primary concern, but care must be taken not to overlook other critical factors following an attack ransomware. For example, the affected arrays could become off-limits and unusable. Following an attack, storage arrays are often blocked for forensic investigations by cyber insurance agencies or law enforcement, preventing organizations from recovering data on infected systems. Without a data storage infrastructure that allows systems to be recovered, organizations are stuck.
Fortunately, there are solutions on the market today that can mitigate this risk. Some suppliers may offer SLA for recovering from ransomware attacks in addition to a subscription STaaS existing, to ensure a clean storage environment with bundled technical and professional services. In practice, this means being able to provide a completely new storage environment from which to restore data in just a few hours, in case the original one is not available. This type of guarantee can give businesses peace of mind that they can recover safely and faster, even if they array are blocked following an attack.
The key to organizational success is resilience and agility
Modern data threats require modern data protection solutions. World Backup Day is a reminder for organizations to reevaluate their approach to data security. It is critical that companies commit to building resilience and agility across the organization. By protecting critical IT infrastructure and implementing a modern data protection strategy with effective data protection and recovery processes, businesses can avoid nightmares related to cyber threats and downtime.