By Nikhil Korgaonkar, Regional Director, Arcserve India & SAARC
Sophistication in cyberattacks is increasing by the day, with only 1 in 5 enterprises being confident that they could recover from a ransomware attack. In a recent survey conducted by Dimensional Research, 96% of IT decision-makers reported they are worried about ransomware attacks. CISOs are stepping up the protection of their business with prevention solutions, such as firewalls, identity, and access management and passwords. However, there is still one challenge at large– data storage.
Understanding the Importance of Immutable Storage
When a company falls victim to a cyberattack, every second of business downtime is painful and expensive and can result in a loss of $5,600 per minute, according to Gartner. Cyberattack prevention measures are essential for security. The total cost of recovery from a ransomware attack has more than doubled in a year, increasing from $761,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021 globally, as per the Sophos report. However, CISOs also need data protection to achieve their primary objective of data security and availability. Achieving this well depends on data backup and storage.
Indian companies pay around $76,619 as ransom on average. However, despite paying up the ransom, on average, organisations could retrieve only 75 per cent of their data in India, compared to a global average of 65 percent, and only 4 per cent got all their data back.
Solutions such as firewalls, identity, access management and passwords, etc., underpin all business operations and are prime targets for hackers during cyberattacks. These solutions should, therefore, also be the top priority when it comes to preparing data security policies. Backup and immutable storage solutions protect data in case of an attack or any other business disaster. They are the last line of defence that guarantees data security and availability.
Establishing data immutability for optimal security
Implementing a holistic approach to data security by integrating an immutable data storage solution is crucial as it strengthens data resilience. A business can never stop cyberattacks, but neutralizing their effects can ensure business continuity, which is critical.
The most important step for a company that wants to protect itself against ransomware is to back up files regularly and store them using an immutable storage solution. The most sophisticated attacks make it possible to encrypt both the files and the recovery points. An immutable snapshot is a copy of your data that ransomware or a user cannot modify or delete. An organization can quickly recover data written to an immutable data storage solution following data corruption or deletion, ransomware attacks, or other issues. Indeed, users can independently recover their data by looking through their files on Windows Explorer or Finder on a Mac. There’s no need to recover data using the previous day’s backup – users look through the files and select the data they want to restore.
As well as making their teams aware of security risks, CISOs must also increase their awareness of the importance of data storage. Data security policies are often limited to the basics and are not robust enough in today’s world, where the number of attacks is rising. Data is a huge money-maker for hackers, so businesses should be asking, not if, but when they will become ransomware victims. Now is the time to change your information security strategy and incorporate a holistic approach to data protection.