3 Tips for Protecting your Company Against Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware has been on a rise this year and is expected to rise even more in the coming years. Ransomware damages are expected to cost $11.5 billion in 2019 and about $20 billion by 2021. The good news, however, is that there are relatively easy things any company can do to protect themselves from an attack and also recover from an attack if an attack happens to strike.

Implement The 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

One of the simplest and cost-effective things a company can do to protect themselves against ransomware attacks is to implement a cloud backup a strategy which is reliable and effective. This is where the 3-2-1 strategy comes in and since it is so effective, it is widely used.

The 3-2-1 strategy states that you should have three copies of data, stored on two different types of storage media and one of those copies should be stored offsite.

To further clarify this, it simply means that the three copies should be your production copy and the other two should be backup copies. The two backup copies should be on different types of media such as a separate network-attached storage (NAS) device and finally, one of those copies should be at an offsite location or in the cloud. Backup to Azure can be used for cloud backups.

Stay Updated on Security Patches

One of the most primary targets for hackers are operating systems, software, and device firmware. If these are not updated with the latest security patches, hackers figure out and take advantage of the vulnerabilities in the systems and this can help them to launch an attack, so keeping them updated with the latest security patch is very important.

Regularly check for updates and whenever an update comes, install it immediately. If this seems like a lot of work, security updates can be automated. Simply allow updates to be updated automatically whenever a new update comes and it will install on its own.

Educate Employees

Hackers often launch attacks through phishing emails and if employees are not trained well enough to distinguish between a phishing email and a regular one, they might fall prey to these scams.

Phishing emails usually have, grammatical mistakes, urgency inclined towards making you do or click something, an attractive offer about a product or a notice stating that something has happened to your bank or apple account but these emails usually have an unauthentic domain name. Backup disaster recovery solution techniques must be adopted to save your data from disasters.

Conclusion

Ransomware is a hot topic and will continue spreading the heat in 2020. Making sure that your company is protected against ransomware has become a topic priority nowadays. Cloud backups, Veeam backup to Azure and the above tips can help greatly to achieve it.

Tips for Tackling the Challenges of Hybrid Cloud Backups

Hybrid cloud backup is a very popular method and is used by many organizations worldwide through different tools such as Veeam backup to Azure, but the combination of both local and cloud storage can increase complexity and challenges. To overcome this, you, as a business owner, should make sure that you are managing the backed-up data efficiently.

Hybrid Cloud Backups Can Be Costly

One major challenge is the cost. Cloud providers charge users based on the amount of backup storage space they use. Organizations can help to minimize costs by using data lifecycle management policies to prevent any excessive accumulation of backup data in the cloud.

This might help in reducing costs as it can enable users to purge aging backup data or simply move old data to less expensive cloud archival storage.

Bandwidth Issues

Another challenge is bandwidth. There are several things that administrators can do to help keep their cloud backups form using all the available bandwidth. This may include bringing down the cost of cloud backups as many providers bill their customers for the bandwidth they consume with those backups.

Another possible solution could be to use data deduplication for cloud backups. Duplication removes redundant data from backups and can significantly reduce the volume of data transmitted to the cloud.  

Cloud Storage Gateway is also an option in reducing the bandwidth. It often has its own internal storage and it can accommodate the on-premises backups.

Increased Management Complexity with Hybrid Cloud Backups

An additional challenge with hybrid cloud backups is increased management complexity. The backup architecture of an organization that decides to store backups on-premises and in the cloud will be a lot complex than of an organization that decides to back up its data to a single location.

This should be kept in mind when opting for hybrid cloud backups as management of these backups would be a lot complex than regular backups, stored in a single location.

One way to help reduce complexity is to use a single backup appliance for everything. This means, a single backup appliance for on-premises backups and the same for cloud backups. This way, you will be able to manage all of your backup-related resources in one place.

The good news is that most backup applications support both cloud and on-premises backups and so do many vendors, like Dell, Unitrends, StoneFly, etc.

Conclusion

Hybrid cloud backups are a good viable option but only if you can manage them efficiently. It is also best to know how much you keep on-premises and how much you keep in the cloud. This can help you identify and overcome the challenges of hybrid cloud backups and enable you to utilize them to the fullest.