Selecting a Backup Solution to Protect Against Crytolocker and Ransomware | Asigra

Posted by Tracy Staniland

You’ve heard the stories. There has been no shortage of organizations affected by the likes of Cryptolocker, Crytowall, and Ransomware. Many would prefer to not admit that they were a victim. However, we can’t hide from the fact that these vicious malware issues exist in the marketplace and without the proper data protection solution in place, companies will remain vulnerable targets for data loss.

The number one reason for data loss beyond hardware malfunctions is user/employee error. An employee over writes data, maliciously deletes data, or receives an email with an attachment containing an executable file and because the email states it is from a trusted source they click on the attachment which releases the virus into company’s systems.

As a cloud-based backup and recovery vendor working with hundreds of Solution Providers around the world, we have heard many stories lately about companies being hit by Cryptolocker and although these stories could be disastrous, our Partners have been able to help companies recover their data and resume their business operations quickly and efficiently.

Recently, a Midwest based Asigra Partner helped an American organization restore 66,000 files after they were hammered by the Cryptolocker virus. And Databarracks, a veteran Asigra Partner located in the UK, helped a customer plagued by Cryptolocker recover their files immediately without the need to pay the ransom demand. Check out the full case study to find out how Databarracks helped Major Players, a leading marketing and creative recruitment agency, beat Cryptolocker with backup.

So, what are the top 4 things that you should consider when implementing a data protection solution to protect your organization against ransomware.

1. Are all of your data sources protected?  Do you have a data protection solution deployed across your organization to protect data on physical and virtual servers, desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and SaaS-based applications like Office 365, Google Apps and Salesforce.com? Don’t leave any data vulnerable. Choose a comprehensive secure cloud-based data protection solution that can protect all data sources to reduce your total cost of ownership.
2. Agent vs Agentless. An agentless solution will allow you to avoid installing agents on all devices across your entire organization. This will reduce the risk of security breaches and minimize time associated with ongoing maintenance updates.
3. Security. This should be your number one consideration. Ensure that you select a solution that provides maximum security with encryption of the data in-flight and at rest. You should look for a NIST FIPS 140-2 certified solution that also uses AES-256 data encryption and provides customer-controlled encryption key management.
4. Recovery assurance.  Being able to back up your data is only one aspect of the solution. Being able to recover your data when you need it is really the desired business outcome. If your organization is hit with a malware virus, you want to know without a doubt that you can recover your data. Viable data protection solutions should include capabilities such as autonomic healing to verify the logical and physical integrity of the data written to the storage systems and restore validation to ensure that the data is actually restorable by simulating real recovery – without actually writing the restored data.
5. WAN optimization. If you are going to take the plunge to consider a cloud-based protection solution make sure it is WAN Optimized to ensure the data flow across the wide area network is efficient.  Especially if you have branch and remote offices, are using SaaS based applications or have remote workers in the field using laptops that contain corporate data.

Don’t let your company be a victim of data loss.  Implement a comprehensive data protection solution that can protect all data sources across your entire organization to fight against present and future malicious malware attacks.

Have an experience you want to share – let us know. Or if you have had the unlucky experience of data loss as a result of Crytolocker, Crytowall or Ransomware, give us a call at 416-736-8111 to discuss how we can help.