How Immutable Data Protection Ensures You’ll Never Pay if Ransomware Strikes

All it takes is a simple search using the term “ransomware” to clarify how much havoc cybercriminals are wreaking on businesses daily. Recent big stories include:

• U.S. Disrupts North Korea Ransomware Campaign Against Hospitals
• Lilith: The Latest Threat in Ransomware
• American Dental Association Report Data Breach in the Wake of Ransomware Attacks
• Protecting Against Kubernetes-Borne Ransomware

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) confirms the breadth of ransomware threats in its 2021 Internet Crime Report, with the first sentence of the introduction reading, “In 2021, America experienced an unprecedented increase in cyberattacks and malicious cyber activity.” Sadly, that’s too true, with Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report finding a 13 percent increase in ransomware breaches between November 2020 and the end of October 2021. That’s more than the report found in the last five years combined.  

Data Protection Starts With a Plan

If you’re an IT pro, you already know how tough it is to protect your data. You simply can’t stop every attack that’s coming your way. That’s why every organization needs to have an up-to-date disaster recovery plan. You’ll find a step-by-step guide to creating yours in this post. Your plan must address your recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPO and RTO) and the technologies needed to meet them when backing up and recovering your data.

Employ the 3-2-1-1 Backup Strategy

Hackers are now targeting backups to prevent their victims from recovering, with Conti Ransomware as just one example. For that reason alone, we firmly believe that the only way to put an unbreakable recovery plan in place is by replacing the old 3-2-1 approach.

The 3-2-1-1 backup strategy:

• Keep 3 copies of your data (one primary and two backups)
• Store 2 copies locally on two formats (network-attached storage, tape, or local drive)
• Store 1 copy offsite in the cloud or secure storage
• Keep 1 copy in immutable storage, because it’s the only way you can be sure your data can be recovered.

Immutable Backups Save the Day

Immutable backups can’t be altered or deleted, period. Using this write-once, ready-many-times format, your data is protected, even if hackers get into your systems. Immutable network-attached storage like Arcserve OneXafe is the perfect on-premises backup target for many organizations.

OneXafe combines an immutable object store with continuous data protection (CDP) that takes low-overhead snapshots every 90 seconds. Each snapshot results in a new, immutable object. And each snapshot is a view of the file system at the instant the snapshot was taken. These snapshots let you go back to specific points in time and recover entire file systems in minutes.

Get Immutability Now

With ransomware attacks rising, you need to implement an immutable data protection solution. To get expert help in choosing and deploying the right solution for your needs, talk to an Arcserve technology partner. Check out demos on-demand and free trial offers, too.