Is your backup protected against ransomware?

JC De Kock, country manager for Acronis Emerging Markets.

Data protection has never been more important – or more difficult, says JC De Kock, country manager for Acronis Emerging Markets.

He points out that as the threats facing companies continue to grow, and as attacks increase in scope and severity, security is being prioritised by organisations of all sizes, and from all sectors. However, the ever-increasing numbers of breaches being disclosed indicate that there is no way to ensure 100% effective protection, he says.

“This is why backup is a recommended – and vital – element in any security strategy. Even should the worst-case scenario happen, backups ensure that the business can recover quickly. This is especially important in the age of rampant ransomware. The costs of falling victim to ransomware have steadily increased over the last year, causing an average of 10 days of downtime and about $36,295 in recovery. In light of this, companies have to start re-evaluating their backup regimes to ensure they can continue operating in the event of an attack.”

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De Kock explains that it’s well-known that a detailed backup strategy serves as an insurance policy if data is ever lost or damaged due to hardware or software failure, natural disaster or user error.

“What’s less commonly considered is the value of backups in the case of a ransomware attack. Companies that have backed their data up offsite need not worry about ransomware because they should be able to restore their systems quickly and easily. With regular backups that are secured in the cloud, ransomware becomes little more than a nuisance. If a business is hit by an attack, it has little to worry about because it has safe, secure copies of any files that might have been encrypted.”

Creative cybercriminals

However, with the increasing popularity of cloud backups, cybercriminals are getting even more creative. In order to compromise a cloud-based backup, the criminals need to acquire credentials to access the cloud, and regular ransomware malware does not have these credentials. Instead, cybercriminals will attack the agent on the device that acts as a gateway to get data to the cloud.

“The statistics point to a growing number of incidents where cloud-based backups have been targeted. Unfortunately, industry experts, including the FBI, predict that the number of ransomware attacks will continue to increase exponentially. Some organisations are therefore starting to create backups of their backups, while others are putting additional security measures in place,” adds Garry Kondakov, CEO of Acronis Emerging Markets.