EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
JAMES WRIGHT , REGIONAL DIRECTOR A / NZ , ASEAN AND
OCEANIA , AT CLOUDIAN
It ’ s well understood and even overstated that there ’ s ‘ no silver bullet ’ to fully protect against cybercrime . But protection from the worst consequences of a cyberattack is certainly an attainable goal , and something organizations have every right to believe in – once they ’ ve got the right measures in place .
Perimeter security and other traditional defenses are a necessary part of the solution , but it ’ s become increasingly clear that these defenses alone are nowhere close to enough . Earlier this year , Cloudian released its Ransomware Victims Report which showed almost half of victims had perimeter defenses in place at the time of attack .
If we accept perimeters will be breached and think more holistically about defense , we can see attention must be paid to enabling quick data recovery in the event of an attack – particularly in the case of ransomware .
Backups are one of the first things hackers target when they access an organization ’ s systems to prevent the victim simply restarting operations from its backups .
Therefore , many organizations are turning to immutable backups . As the name suggests , these are unchangeable and cannot be encrypted by hackers . Once a backup data copy is written , it can ’ t be altered or erased for a specified period of time , making it impossible for ransomware to impact it . If an attack occurs , organizations can quickly restore their data from the immutable backup and recommence operations without paying the ransom .
The other primary negotiating tool hackers have at their disposal is publicly releasing the data they exfiltrate or selling it on the Dark Web . Any organization holds some level of sensitive data it needs to protect , and this is where data encryption comes in .
Data encryption is nothing new . Put simply , it changes data into ciphertext , an unrecognizable format that requires a special key to decipher it , much like what ransomware does to data when it takes hold . Without the corresponding decryption key , hackers can ’ t release the data in any intelligible form .
Backups are one of the first things hackers target when they access an organization ’ s systems .
Attention to detail is important as plenty of security and backup providers claim to ensure data encryption is in place . To prevent data extortion at the hands of ransomware operators , both data at rest ( stored data ) and data-in-flight ( data being acquired or moved – for example , during public cloud migration ) must be encrypted . Anything less than this is leaving the door open for skilled cybercriminals .
More and more enterprise and government organizations are realizing the potential devastation a ransomware attack can cause , including the huge cost of having to cease operations while ransom negotiations are conducted , forensic specialists are called in and IT teams struggle to recover . By employing immutable data backups and data encryption , organizations can avoid all this and be confident they can protect themselves from the worst consequences of a cyberattack .
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