Cyber Defense eMagazine December Edition for 2021

Today, what is required is an elevation in backup strategy from basic to unbreakable. In other words, for
today’s ransomware threat what’s needed is to make backed up data immutable, thereby eliminating any
way it can be deleted or corrupted. Unbreakable Backup can do just that by creating an immutable,
secure format that also stores the admin keys in another location entirely for added protection. And, by
layering-on a backup solution that has built-in verification, savvy SysAdmins can alleviate their worry
about their ability to recover — and redirect their time and attention to activities that more directly impact
their organization’s bottom-line objectives.”
JG Heithcock, general manager of Retrospect, a StorCentric company
“Today’s cyber criminals are attacking backups first, and then once under their control, coming after
production data. This means that many enterprises are feeling a false sense of security, until it is already
too late.
I like to say, ‘backup is one thing, but recovery is everything.” In other words, choose a backup solution
that ensures the recovery piece (which surprisingly, not all of them do). Look for a provider with vast
experience, as well as a track record for continuous innovation that ensures its offerings are prepared to
meet prevailing conditions. The solution(s) should provide broad platform and application support and
ensure protection of every part of your IT environment, on-site, remote, in the cloud and at the edge.
Next, the backup solution should auto-verify the entire backup process, checking each file in its entirety
to ensure the files match across all environments, and you are able to recover in the event of an outage,
disaster or cyber-attack. And, as a last but highly critical step -- at least one backup should be immutable
-- unable to be altered or changed in any way, at any time. Even if the ransomware took a ride along with
your data to your backup site, during the last backup.”
Andy Fernandez, senior manager, product marketing, Zerto, a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
company
“Saying that ransomware attacks are growing in severity and volume is an understatement. Hackers are
finding ways to prolong unplanned downtime and increase data loss, and getting operational (back up
and running) as quickly as possible is key. Yet legacy data protection solutions aren’t focused on the
speed of recovery—only on recovering that data. Many organizations pay the ransom simply because of
how long it would take their backup systems to restore encrypted data. While restoring the encrypted
data is paramount, meeting those SLAs must have equal priority within the modern organization.
Organizations cannot afford to wait days for critical applications to be up and running. From web
experiences to employee tools, time is money and reducing unplanned downtime is key.
Ransomware attacks are evolving, targeting next-gen applications like Kubernetes and Microsoft 365. As
the adoption of cloud applications grows, so will exploits and attacks and in turn the importance of
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