Battling ransomware with IT modernization and the cloud

Ransomware attacks on the public sector are not new, yet they remain a pressing issue to tackle. Governments all across the globe have been spiraling due to various ransomware attacks that have jeopardized payroll systems, customs and tax processing, utilities, and other essential services. Unfortunately, these attacks have become a part of our daily lives, and continue to be an issue of national security for all countries.

The rising frequency and severity of these cyber attacks stress the need to reflect on the security of both enterprises and governments alike. With organizations becoming increasingly vulnerable to ransomware attacks, enterprises must prepare to battle these cyber threats. Rather than reacting after an attack, it’s time to prepare to face ransomware threats.

What is ransomware?

Ransomware is basically a kind of malicious software that blocks the organization’s access to data or the computer system by encrypting it. The attacker then threatens to publish this valuable data unless the victim pays the attacker. In some cases, the attacker sets a deadline for the ransom. On failing to pay the ransom, the attacker increases the amount or deletes the data forever. In short, the attacker holds the organization’s data hostage by accessing the system.

The frequency of these attacks is consistently increasing, with major companies across the globe falling victim to malicious programs. Every consumer or business across all industries faces the risk of ransomware attacks.

Cybercriminals use payment systems that are nearly impossible to trace to remain anonymous. With the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, ransomware attacks have become more frequent. The attackers have a safe and secure way to conduct transactions while remaining anonymous.

Governments and organizations must learn more about ransomware to counter them. The more you know, the better your defense.

The current state of business resilience against ransomware

Traditionally, enterprises have established various backup systems for disaster recovery. However, these tools are not always ready to face ransomware attacks and protect them from data thefts. With more users, the loss of productivity would be higher.

An efficient battle strategy requires solutions beyond endpoint security. By reducing the backup interval from hours to seconds, the enterprise can ensure data encryption and safeguard it from attackers.

Magnifying the IT architecture and resilience

A business can no longer afford to sit back and react to a cyber attack. Organizations must evolve their business continuity and disaster recovery (BCSD) efforts and focus on their overall IT resilience.

While BCSD management is vital for a business, ransomware attacks cause trouble for existing efforts. As most of today’s BCSD efforts lack technical depth, use outdated technologies, and work in silos, they struggle against ransomware attacks.

Most companies do not realize that they can build resilience by extending their IT infrastructure. Modern technologies and tools add a layer of security to the organization while cutting down on costs. This requires the organization to take their thinking and adopt a resilient-by-design mindset and bring modern technologies into play. You might already be using the cloud and automation in your business. Extend their powers to develop your resilience capabilities as well. Your IT resilience will mature with your infrastructure modernization efforts.

Ways to fight ransomware

While it’s almost impossible to avoid being a target of ransomware attacks, there are ways to prevent data loss and recover quickly from the attack. Some best practices to counter ransomware are:

• Update your system to the latest software upgrade patches
• Enable antivirus software, firewalls, email filters, and other preventative software for network security
• Switch to the latest IT infrastructure like cloud and artificial intelligence
• Offer proper cybersecurity training to your employees and train them to identify attacks and phishing emails.
• Back up all files and store them in a read-only repository

Automation leads the way

Managing the physical environments of data was historically a critical component of an enterprise’s BCDR effort. However, this kind of management was tedious, as inefficiency and human error often influenced manual processes.

According to a 2022 survey by Uptime Institute’s Outage Analysis, almost 40% of organizations surveyed suffered from significant outages in the past three years due to human errors. 85% of these errors occurred due to staff failing to follow particular procedures or the process itself having issues.

We now live in a digital world where the possibilities of multi-faced resilience are higher, with automation making operations beyond manual processes and physical conditions possible. Public cloud services and Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) creates agility and efficiency in IT resilience. Enterprises can now build servers with greater accuracy and efficiency. Disaster recovery is easier with the organization running code to rebuild their environments in hours or days rather than spending weeks as per the traditional systems.

Resilience – The Business Case

As per a survey by Gartner, 72% of organizations surveyed have sub-par disaster recovery positions and capabilities, with 63% of them suffering from being overconfident.

Organizations face high pressure to justify their spending on IT resilience, with explaining the return on investment is a daunting task. An enterprise must begin by analyzing its existing recovery mechanisms and capabilities. They must identify if the organization runs on a resource-heavy, expensive site or if the recovery time frame is long.

Once you analyze the existing security and BCDR system, compare the costs of what you can reap with the cost of modernizing the IT infrastructure that’s already in place. For example, you can extend automation and cloud efforts by partnering with the infrastructure and operations team of your organization.

Automation helps you rapidly rebuild and recover the environments affected by ransomware attacks while improving the accuracy and frequency of recovery testing. On the other hand, the cloud reduces the cost of retaining a recovery environment by decreasing the footprint. Investing in the cloud and automation not only boosts your IT resilience but also optimizes the IT operations of your business.

The greatest power of this IT infrastructure modernization comes when you consider it as a natural extension rather than a separate function.

Reaping greater rewards with fewer risks

The traditional approaches to BCDR all work fine, appropriately balancing all recovery costs until a ransomware episode happens. An attack throws the traditional methods out of balance, forcing them to depend on modern technologies for recovery. Automation and cloud computing is now part of an organization’s IT strategies in one way or another. A business can augment the technologies for their BCDR efforts instead of aging methods.

As for an enterprise, modernizing the IT infrastructure is all about connecting the dots. Replacing manual security efforts with automation boosts the response and recovery rates against cyber attacks.

Want to know more about how extending your current IT modernization efforts creates a rapid, more promising, and more cost-effective resilience against ransomware? Let’s take a step further in your IT resilience journey.