Could your backup strategy survive a cyber attack?

As Ransomware becomes increasingly sophisticated, IT managers are being forced to rethink their backup strategies.

Ransomware is currently one of the biggest threats to businesses, and last year 72% of companies surveyed by the Australian government had experienced a Ransomware incident in some form.

What is Ransomware?

As we’ve discussed in earlier blogs, Ransomware is a type of malicious software that once downloaded on to a user system, will spread and encrypt every file within reach. Once the encryption is complete, the business or user will receive a warning that if they don’t pay a specified amount of money, in a certain time frame, their data will be deleted.  The latest versions of these applications have also been rumoured to store personal information gathered from hard drives, in an effort to acquire more money at a later date through phishing attempts and fraud.

I have a backup strategy, so is my business protected?

Many IT managers believe that if they have a backup of their business information stored in a separate location, they are completely protected from Ransomware applications. Unfortunately this isn’t true if their backups are completed by a network attached drive.

If a platform was to be replicated to a secondary data store through a network attached drive, the information would be protected against a physical incident or hardware disaster, but not from Ransomware. The virus would simply travel down the network line to the backup server and begin to encrypt all backups, as well as live data.

How can I protect my backups?

Version roll backs are the key to protecting your information as you can access previously amended documents.

If possible, make sure that you can roll back more than one file at a time. Unfortunately, there are support teams currently rolling back files one by one, so to ensure a speedy recovery you need to look into roll back features.

If you’d like to speak to a disaster recovery expert about how you can protect your business, call 03453 888 327.