By Andy Jonak
We are living in scary times when it comes to IT. Just look at the news, and you'll continue to see another ransomware attack on another company. And it's not just the largest, enterprise-size firms that are being affected. Firms of all sizes are targeted and will continue to be, and it doesn't look like the problem will abate any time soon. So what can be done, realistically, since the challenge of ransomware will never really go away? Our IT systems are critical to doing business, and we must find ways forward. That way forward is generally comprised of two crucial initiatives: 1) implement solutions that are as resistant as possible to help mitigate ransomware attacks and 2) protect and backup your data so you can recover as quickly as possible.
Solutions to Mitigate Ransomware Attacks
As the adage goes, firms don't want to spend money on IT—they have to spend money on IT. They need it to run their businesses, use IT to gain a competitive advantage, and protect their crown jewel, their data. How do you best protect yourself? That question is best left to each company and their needs, but one of the foundational ways is to invest in solutions to prevent and mitigate ransomware attacks. The solution should be immutable where the OS and data written to it cannot be changed, making it less susceptible to attacks. This is one of the first steps in protecting your data and your IT environment.
Protect and Backup Your Data
No matter how secure, sophisticated, and complex your IT systems are, they are not immune from being attacked, so what then? Making sure your data is protected and backed up. It sounds so simple, as don't we all back up our data? To some degree, yes, but to have it done in a way that is simple, automated, unchanging, isolated, and critically, done offsite in another data center or cloud location, and done at regular intervals as close to realtime as possible. Intervals that you can live with if you have to roll back. That way, if something happens and you are affected by ransomware, you can immediately roll back to a good and current usable copy of your data that can allow you to be up and running near instantly. That's how you protect against ransomware by avoiding having your data withheld from you and avoid paying the ransom, should something happen. In today's environment, it's clear that any firm can be a victim of ransomware.
Will implementing solutions that address what I discuss above guarantee you won't have any issues? Of course not; things will happen when it comes to IT—any of us who have been in IT for a while understand that. Threats are real, whether internal or external, and it's not just prudent but necessary to have plans to deal with things when they happen, as they probably will.
This is why we recommend considering Cohesity's solutions. Cohesity's solutions are inherently secure due to their architecture, include an immutable file system and features that help repel ransomware attacks while being easy to use and administer, which is vital, plus they let you recover quickly needed. Also, consider Cohesity's new DataProtect as a Service solution, the first offering under their DMaaS portfolio, in partnership with AWS. It is a data protection solution that is easy to manage, administer, and runs entirely in the cloud, and, most importantly, it just works.
These solutions let you focus on what's important, helping IT make your business better while protecting it from threats and being prepared when things happen, which, of course, they will. Our customers have been using Cohesity solutions to help protect themselves for years because of what I discussed above, as they understand things will happen need to be prepared. I hope you do as well.
Andy