In 2019, the average cost of a ransomware attack was estimated to be $3.86 million, with a business being attacked every 11 seconds. According to Gartner, as much as 75% of IT organizations will face ransomware attacks by 2025.
Companies are coming to terms with the reality that ransomware is becoming an economical and profitable business placing the IT industry at risk. Even with cyberinsurance, carriers oftentimes pay the ransom as opposed to expending funds to help a company recover data. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that ransomware will continue to impact more companies.
Having an all-inclusive ransomware preparedness plan matures your response programs which reduce the likelihood of a successful ransomware attack and decreases the impact of the incident through mature recovery strategies.
The reality is that most businesses test restore after a data breach occurs. The idea of breaking down a functioning data system then restoring it for testing purposes is not only expensive but a risk most businesses are unwilling to take. Testing data systems is a business decision that deserves enterprise-wide attention and is crucial to any strategic goal.
Back IT up
Should IT leaders, then, budget for ransomware? Not entirely.
The crucial defense against ransomware is a robust system of backups. If a company has a secure backup system and performs routine testing, then recovering your data will not be so cumbersome and equate to less than paying the ransom. However, the key is to act now.
The predominance of ransomware that destroys your system’s backup or uses your company’s data for extortion brings into light the importance of having controls in place to handle the complexities of a data breach. Deploying the right control for your business is a quantifiable business decision that starts with the right tools for an assessment.
A multifaceted response team
A proactive response to a ransomware attack requires a multi-disciplinary approach between your organization’s backup team and security team. Both practices are critical in addressing strategies to not only protect and repel but also to adequately recover in the event of a successful ransomware attack.
Current recovery strategies typically account for day-to-day operational and data recovery events but fall short of addressing a catastrophic ransomware infection. Developing a mature ransomware readiness and response program is the first and crucial step.
The rise of hybrid and multi-cloud data management will lead to an increase in cyberthreats—with cloud quickly becoming the popular model of deployment.
Identify your key performance indicator (KPI) concerns and tailor a solution based on the following data protection focus areas:
- Singular software platform
- All-inclusive licensing model
- No cloud tiering tax to or from cloud
- Software licensing independent of hardware
- Global in-country support with onsite break fix resources
- Global language support
- Extensive workload support
- Certified to protect Docker containers
- Agentless, modern, next-generation workload protection
- Self-contained granular Exchange recovery
- Self-contained bare metal restore functionality
- Ability to protect filer data with NDMP
- Support for multiple concurrent restores from GUI
- Backup VMware without requiring VM proxies
- Active Directory protection
- Global deployment capabilities
- Automated hands-off data protection with intelligent policy queries
- Resource limits built into product
- Integration with business continuity orchestration tools
- Support for BYO environments
- Available converged first-party purpose-built appliances
- Scale-up architecture providing scalability without complexity
- Predictable availability and resiliency
- Active-active high availability available in appliances
- No nightly re-indexing of metadata/catalog
- Agent-based client-side deduplication
- Global deduplication not limited to workloads
- Higher capacity, faster backups, lower floorspace for lower TCO
- Minimal environmental resource requirements
- Active-passive high availability available in appliances
- 140-2 FIPS compliance
- STIG rule-based hardening & embedded security SW in appliances
- Built-in ransomware resiliency
- Mining backup catalog for insights on protected data footprint
- Built-in classification policies for governance and compliance
- Advanced analytics and environmental reporting
An assessment that reviews your vulnerabilities and preparedness for recovery serves as an effective tool to help identify areas of potential risk in your data system and identify approaches for recovery that best serve your business.
To better prepare your IT strategy, analyze the following steps:
- Review your environment to make sure it is aligned with the NIST SP 1800-25 security standards.
- Calculate if your data protection environment has appropriate hardening including data isolation and air gapping.
- Evaluate whether your business can recover from a data breach should one occur.
- Identify other key security points in your ecosystem.
Mature your organizations data management strategy
Applying a data protection and information management practice to your business needs removes the guesswork and allows you to inspect your data protection, data loss, data governance, and information management.
Explore how to mature your organization’s data management strategy by working with a partner to take a readiness assessment and better prepare your cybersecurity.
