In 2020, cybersecurity was catapulted into the spotlight. Between pandemic-themed phishing scams, new and more destructive ransomware strains, and security perimeters thrown wide open by an abrupt pivot to remote work environments, IT security teams went into overdrive.
Today, organizations are moving out of survival mode and into recovery, but many of the same threats remain. Data protection remains top of mind as businesses navigate current cybersecurity and data protection challenges, including evolving ransomware tactics and the rise of a new generation of ransomware groups.
Though ransomware is not a new threat, ransomware operators have upped the ante in recent years, first by introducing double extortion—and, more recently, triple extortion—tactics to put pressure on organizations to pay the ransom.
According to the Sophos State of Ransomware 2021 report, the average cost of recovery from a ransomware attack has reached $1.85 million. That’s more than twice the cost of recovery in 2020.
Additionally, the study found that the average ransom paid is $170,404, but only 8 percent of organizations that paid the ransom were able to recover all of their encrypted data.
Although ransomware attacks remain one of the top security concerns for enterprise IT security, some of the more prominent ransomware gangs, including REvil, have recently gone quiet after several high-profile attacks put them in the news.
However, cybersecurity researchers have identified four dangerous emerging ransomware gangs that they predict will be stirring up trouble soon: AvosLocker, Hive Ransomware, HelloKitty: Linux Edition, and LockBit 2.0.
Integrated data protection solutions are essential in today’s threat landscape.
With cyberthreats continuing to be a high-level concern and many organizations choosing to continue supporting remote work environments for the foreseeable future, traditional cybersecurity and data protection strategies can no longer create an effective security perimeter.
To secure today’s widely distributed, variable workload teams, organizations are looking beyond cybersecurity and adopting integrated data protection solutions.
Integrated data protection combines data protection, backup, and disaster recovery processes into one centrally managed solution. In addition to providing 24/7 data protection and recovery from anywhere, integrated data protection solutions save time and money, reduce complexity, and minimize risk.
Integrated data protection can be delivered in multiple ways and in different environments depending on your organization’s specific infrastructure requirements, including as cloud-based data protection as a service, as an on-premises software solution, or as a turnkey appliance.
These 4 integrated data protection capabilities support a proactive approach to cybersecurity.
Regardless of how you choose to implement an integrated data protection strategy, there are four key capabilities every solution should provide that work in tandem to proactively prevent data loss, increase visibility, and enable fast recovery in the event of an unplanned outage:
1. Reduce complexity to reduce risk.
Today’s IT infrastructures are notoriously complex. Integrated data protection reduces that complexity—and the risk inherent in that complexity—by providing a single solution for cybersecurity and data protection.
An all-in-one data protection solution allows you to neutralize ransomware attacks, restore data, and perform effective disaster recovery (DR)—and manage it all from one centralized interface.
2. Protect the entire infrastructure, from endpoint to office (remote or on-premises) to cloud.
Integrated data protection means no matter where your data lives—on-premises; in the public, private, or hybrid cloud; or even on a secondary storage device—it is managed and secured through a single platform.
With integrated data protection, you can eliminate the need for discrete products, prevent ransomware attacks, safeguard all of your systems and applications, and ensure you have immutable copies of all essential data.
3. Centralize reporting and analytics.
Reclaim valuable IT time with an integrated data protection solution that can protect, manage, and report on all data from a single management console.
Streamlined reporting makes it easy to keep business and IT stakeholders informed by providing SLA reporting that includes RTO and RTA comparisons.
4. Plan for disaster recovery.
Integrated data protection simplifies disaster recovery with a single solution for backup, replication, recovery, deduplication, instant restoration, and long-term retention.
Integrated data protection provides orchestrated recovery, so you can maintain virtual copies of mission-critical systems, spin up business-critical system backups as virtual machines, and granularly restore individual files and emails.
What’s next for cybersecurity and data protection?
It’s been more than a year since COVID-19 turned the world upside down. Cybersecurity is still a high priority for IT teams, but now, instead of making knee-jerk choices to secure their organizations’ networks and data from immediate threats, CISOs and IT managers are taking a proactive approach to protect sensitive data and securing networks from infiltration.
Integrated data protection solutions provide a multilayer defense against data loss and corruption by reducing complexity, enabling fast recovery, and increasing visibility across workloads.
Discover more ways to protect your business-critical data from today’s biggest threats. Download Don't Become a Statistic: Stay Ahead of Cybercriminals by Implementing a Holistic Ransomware Protection Strategy.
