Advancing Ransomware Attacks and Creation of New Cyber Security Strategies

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As ransomware is on the rise, the organisations are focusing too much on the anti-virus softwares rather than proactively forming strategies to deal with cyber-attacks which could pose as an indefinite threat to the users. Nevertheless one of the good advices to deal with this issue is the creation of the air-gaps, as through these it becomes quite easy to store and protect critical data. It even allows the offline storage of data. So, when a ransomware attack occurs, it should be possible to restore your data without much downtime – if any at all.

But it usually happens so that organisations more often than not find themselves taking one step forward and then one step back. As traditionally, the ransomware is more focused on backup programs and their associated storage but on the other hand it seems very keen on perpetually targeting the storage subsystems which has spurred organisations into having robust backup procedures in place to counter the attack if it gets through.

So in order for the organisations to be proactive it is recommended that they should resort to different ways to protecting data that allows it to be readily recovered whenever a ransomware attack, or some other cyber security issue, threatens to disrupt day-to-day business operations and activities.

Clive Longbottom, client services director at analyst firm Quocirca explains: “If your backup software can see the back-up, so can the ransomware. Therefore, it is a waste of time arguing about on-site v off-site – it comes down to how well air locked the source and target data locations are.”

However, to defend against any cyber-attack there needs to be several layers of defence which may or may not consist of a firewall, anti-virus software or backup. The last layer of defence that is to be used by the user though, must be the most robust of them all to stop any potential costly disruption in its track before it’s too late. So, anti-virus software must still play a key defensive role.

A ransomware attack is pretty brutal, warns Longbottom, “It requires a lot of CPU and disk activity. It should be possible for a system to pick up this type of activity and either block it completely, throttles it, or prevents it from accessing any storage system other than ones that are directly connected physically to the system.”

Now coming down to the traditional approach, it is often observed that data centres are in position in close proximity to each other in order to easily tackle the impact of latency, but for the fact they are all too often situated within the same circles of disruption increases the financial, operational and reputational risks associated with downtime.

Therefore there are a few certain tips that could allow the user to successfully migrate data to prevent ransomware attacks: