Today’s cybersecurity landscape demands a proactive focus on data resiliency. According to a recent study from Enterprise Strategy Group, 96% of organizations who experienced a ransomware attack in the last two years had their backup data targeted. Almost half (49%) took up to five business days to recover, and most did not recover the entirety of their data. This has huge consequences for businesses – operationally, financially, and reputationally. Traditional backup systems are no longer enough to stand against this rising threat.
AI implementation is only exacerbating the problem given the increase in data utilization and storage needed to train and house AI models. Cloud storage costs are spiraling out of control, and to make up for it, organizations are cutting costs elsewhere by resorting to unsafe storage practices – such as frequently placing critical data in cold storage tiers without enabling Object Lock for protection. The modern data landscape is also more spread out. Data is being stored closer to the edge, especially for emerging technologies such as self-driving cars, smart homes, and AI models that need real-time, real-world data to operate quickly and avoid outages.
A robust backup strategy is not often at the top of the list of organizations’ cybersecurity playbooks, but with today’s cybercriminals targeting backups and the growing importance of data with the influx of AI, it should be. Here’s what enterprises should pay attention to when re-evaluating data backup strategy.
Keeping Data Safe with Immutability and Zero Trust
Let’s start with the basics. It’s impossible to have true data resilience without immutability, a type of storage that does not allow data to be modified or deleted after it has been recorded. Immutable storage protects your data from ransomware’s encryption or deletion, among other things. It’s a broad concept that has been interpreted many ways across the industry, but the bottom line is that a backup storage setup is only truly immutable if it is impossible for anyone, with any level of access or privilege, to alter the data in any way.
Zero Trust is now a widely accepted best practice in the IT industry for networks, applications, and overall IT infrastructure, but have you considered applying it to backup architecture? It is one of the core concepts of an immutable storage environment. Cybercriminals use compromised credentials to move around networks and infiltrate backups to delete or encrypt data, holding it for ransom and forcing their victims to pay exorbitant prices to avoid downtime and data loss. Therefore, backups should operate on a Zero Trust, Zero Access model – never assuming a user is who they say they are without thorough verification.
Additionally, certifying account separation between the backup application and the backup storage protects backups from account compromise attacks. Last but certainly not least, follow the 3-2-1-1-0 method of data backup that recommends having three backup copies of data on two different media, one of which is offsite and one of which is offline and air-gapped, and zero errors in the data copies. Keeping copies of your data in different resiliency zones/locations give you options should one path fail.
Ensuring Reliable Data Recovery
Now data protection basics are covered, and your data is safe. What about bringing it back swiftly when the unthinkable happens? Exporting large amounts of critical business data and applications out of the cloud can take days, if not weeks, possibly bringing extra fees with it. Providing secure, on-prem storage as one of your resiliency zones lets you recover your data at the fastest speed possible no matter the status of your external connections. This is often overlooked as cloud adoption has grown, but it remains a key pillar in a successful resiliency plan.
Another important element to ensure recovery is trusting and verifying vendor solutions. Third-party validation of vendor claims of recovery and immutability is critical. It’s no surprise that according to the report mentioned earlier, 93% of the 200 IT decision-makers surveyed prefer a verification method, with security testing/reporting by an independent third-party company being the most popular method.
Immutability is truly the last line of defense during a ransomware attack, but only 59% of organizations are deploying immutable storage, and only 58% are adhering to the 3-2-1 rule for maintaining multiple backup copies to ensure recovery. It’s time for organizations to start prioritizing data backup security and resiliency, allowing them to protect themselves from increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats, meet business objectives, and keep pace with the AI boom.
