A ransomware attack happens every 11 seconds by 2022, with a global cost of $20 billion yearly. Increasingly hackers are targeting data, infiltrating networks, and encrypting them during a ransomware attack. Just having a copy of data won’t keep your organization safe. With the appropriate backup and disaster recovery plan in place, you can refuse to pay the ransom, potentially saving your company millions of dollars.
There are two ways to strengthen your security posture and reduce your risk: air-gap and immutable backups. Putting both in place will offer you the best protection.
Air-Gapped Backups are separated from your network.
Air-gapping prevents hackers from accessing the data on your server remotely. It’s a backup copy that you store on infrastructure that is not accessible from an external connection or the internet. This gap ensures there is no direct connection to your production servers or storage systems. It provides protection from malware and keeps your data offline making it more difficult for a ransomware attack to spread to your backups.
This is part of the 3-2-1-1-0 industry recommended best practice for a backup strategy. This includes having 3 different copies of your data, in two different media, one which is offsite, one that is offline, and 0 errors after backup testing and recoverability verification.
Adding air-gapping also helps your organization comply with industry regulations such as HIPPA/HITRUST, FINRA, FISMA etc., ensuring your data is recoverable while reducing your risk of breaches.
Immutable Backups are unchangeable.
Ensuring your data is immutable means it is fixed, unchangeable, and can never be deleted, encrypted or modified. This is imperative as more and more cyberattacks are happening where a hacker encrypts an organization’s key data and will only unlock it after the ransom is paid.
According to the IDC Whitepaper: State of Ransomware and Disaster Prepardness in 2022 found that 79% of those surveyed activated a disaster response, 83% experienced data corruption from an attack, and nearly 60% experienced unrecoverable data. As you can see from these statistics, it isn’t a matter of if you will be hacked, it’s a matter of when.
Cyberattacks affect your business in many ways from the day-to-day operations to the financial impact of paying a ransom resulting in millions of dollars spent. Now is the time to ensure you can take the necessary precautions to recover quickly and minimize your risk.
Yearly testing is imperative.
Your backup and recovery strategy needs to be tested every year in order to verify it will protect you from a breach or a cyberattack. Being able to restore your data quickly will help you avoid a major financial or reputational impact on your business.
When you complete your annual testing, it gives your organization the peace of mind that your data will be safe and recoverable in the event of an attack. Basic backups aren’t enough to protect you from cyberattacks anymore. They need to be air-gapped and immutable and tested annually.
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Sources: https://dataprot.net/statistics/ransomware-statistics/