However, most businesses long ago recognised the threat and took steps to ensure systems remain secure and safe. With the knowledge that they can always use their backup to restore systems made unavailable by a nasty virus, ransomware, or even employee sabotage.
Unfortunately, the latest generation of ransomware is clever enough, or devious enough, to seek out the backups and ensure they are compromised, too. The criminals and their tools are far more sophisticated today, and thanks to cryptocurrencies, the prizes are bigger and easier to get.
At this point, you might be forgiven for thinking of an ‘air gap’ between systems and the backup, like in the old days when tape was the go-to medium. Keeping tape backups offsite also addressed at least two points of the old three, two, one rule.
For those requiring a refresh, the rule was/is to keep at least three copies of your data, store two backup copies on different storage media, and at least one should be kept offsite.
However, while tape was great in its day, it can take a long time to create an accurate backup from a tape stored offsite. When the worst happens, the time taken to recover is directly linked to a business’s long–term survival—the more time it takes, the less likely it is that the business will survive.
Backups are much easier to create now than ever before, and many businesses believe that using the Cloud creates an air gap that offers greater security. However, only some Cloud backups are immutable, and that can be a problem.
An immutable backup is one where the data is fixed, unchangeable, and can never be deleted. This is critical when combatting new ransomware, which seeks to encrypt the backup as well as the live files in the system, to ensure an organisation has no option but to pay up for the decryption key.
An immutable backup protects against not only ransomware but also administrative mishaps, deliberate sabotage by an insider, and file corruption through application bugs.
These immutable backups cannot be changed or, by definition, overwritten. An organisation can keep an archive of these unalterable backups to guarantee survival from a ransomware attack by recovering from the last clean backup.
This ability to archive immutable backups also provides additional data compliance benefits for businesses like law firms operating in regulated sectors, where demonstrably accurate copies of historical data can be retained and presented when required.
Many backup solutions are available today; most are cheaper, more straightforward to implement, and easier to use than in previous years. Many, like ours, now include immutable backups, which make sense for any business seeking greater confidence in its ability to mitigate a ransomware attack.
When implementing Eloquent Ransomware Protect, your critical data is stored in our Cloud, geographically separate from your live systems. These are essential cornerstones of data storage best practices.
The Cloud remains accessible from anywhere, protecting your data against any disaster that may befall your location and ensuring recovery of your most recent immutable, air-gapped backup can be immediate, unlike tapes, which used to have to be retrieved from an offsite location.
Eloquent Ransomware ensures that you will never be in the awful position where paying the ransom to gain access to your data is your only option. It also protects you against data corruption, whether through hardware failure or malicious action, which all makes for a compelling case to get in touch with us today before you regret not acting before the hackers do.
However, most businesses long ago recognised the threat and took steps to ensure systems remain secure and safe. With the knowledge that they can always use their backup to restore systems made unavailable by a nasty virus, ransomware, or even employee sabotage.
Unfortunately, the latest generation of ransomware is clever enough, or devious enough, to seek out the backups and ensure they are compromised, too. The criminals and their tools are far more sophisticated today, and thanks to cryptocurrencies, the prizes are bigger and easier to get.
At this point, you might be forgiven for thinking of an ‘air gap’ between systems and the backup, like in the old days when tape was the go-to medium. Keeping tape backups offsite also addressed at least two points of the old three, two, one rule.
For those requiring a refresh, the rule was/is to keep at least three copies of your data, store two backup copies on different storage media, and at least one should be kept offsite.
However, while tape was great in its day, it can take a long time to create an accurate backup from a tape stored offsite. When the worst happens, the time taken to recover is directly linked to a business’s long–term survival—the more time it takes, the less likely it is that the business will survive.
Backups are much easier to create now than ever before, and many businesses believe that using the Cloud creates an air gap that offers greater security. However, only some Cloud backups are immutable, and that can be a problem.
An immutable backup is one where the data is fixed, unchangeable, and can never be deleted. This is critical when combatting new ransomware, which seeks to encrypt the backup as well as the live files in the system, to ensure an organisation has no option but to pay up for the decryption key.
An immutable backup protects against not only ransomware but also administrative mishaps, deliberate sabotage by an insider, and file corruption through application bugs.
These immutable backups cannot be changed or, by definition, overwritten. An organisation can keep an archive of these unalterable backups to guarantee survival from a ransomware attack by recovering from the last clean backup.
This ability to archive immutable backups also provides additional data compliance benefits for businesses like law firms operating in regulated sectors, where demonstrably accurate copies of historical data can be retained and presented when required.
Many backup solutions are available today; most are cheaper, more straightforward to implement, and easier to use than in previous years. Many, like ours, now include immutable backups, which make sense for any business seeking greater confidence in its ability to mitigate a ransomware attack.
When implementing Eloquent Ransomware Protect, your critical data is stored in our Cloud, geographically separate from your live systems. These are essential cornerstones of data storage best practices.
The Cloud remains accessible from anywhere, protecting your data against any disaster that may befall your location and ensuring recovery of your most recent immutable, air-gapped backup can be immediate, unlike tapes, which used to have to be retrieved from an offsite location.
Eloquent Ransomware ensures that you will never be in the awful position where paying the ransom to gain access to your data is your only option. It also protects you against data corruption, whether through hardware failure or malicious action, which all makes for a compelling case to get in touch with us today before you regret not acting before the hackers do.
© 2023 Eloquent Limited. All rights reserved.
