Ransomware is on the march, wreaking havoc across industries as one of the most dominant threats facing organizations today. Stories of high-profile attacks that left hospitals unable to function properly, broken supply chains, and six-figure ransom payments make headlines almost daily.
No company, it seems, is safe. The million-dollar question facing security leaders and IT teams is not Yeah but when Cybercriminals will knock on your digital doors to make you the next victims. Since the first known ransomware attack in 1989, ransomware criminals have become more brazen, ruthless, and disruptive as they seek ever-larger rewards for their evil intent.
With a Almost 40% annual increase in attacks worldwide., organizations face significant challenges in protecting their networks. In the Asia-Pacific region, Cybersecurity incidents increased by 22%. underscoring a growing threat landscape.
In 2023, the cost of recovering Small businesses averaged $205,400, with 84% reporting lost revenue after the attack. The fast The rise of ransomware is expected to cost $265 billion globally by 2031. Recovery is daunting; It may take weeks or months before systems are fully restored. This stark reality highlights the urgency of having robust security measures and backup strategies in place to mitigate the impact of ransomware.
Therefore, it is essential to understand ransomware behavior patterns and implement preventive measures. This is the key for businesses to ensure data security and maintain uninterrupted operations.
Understanding and prevention
Ransomware has become a sophisticated criminal scheme targeting vulnerable organizations. Understanding their typical attack path is key for security teams to protect systems.
Ransomware attacks typically develop in three key phases:
- Reconnaissance: Hackers gather intelligence on potential targets by identifying security weaknesses through phishing attempts, network scanning, etc.
- System Infiltration: Attackers exploit vulnerabilities to gain access, often using phishing lures or compromised websites to induce users to allow the download of malware.
- Encryption and extortion: Upon gaining access, ransomware stealthily moves laterally through the system, collecting critical data and disabling backups before encrypting files. Hackers then demand a ransom to decrypt the data, threatening destruction or exposure of files if organizations do not comply.
As attacks advance at great speed and scale, preventative vigilance is essential. It is imperative to keep security systems and tools up to date, avoid unverified downloads, monitor threat intelligence, and implement cyber awareness training.
However, the most crucial defense remains isolated and consistent data backups. This incursion protection enables resiliency and rapid restoration to maintain business operations. For organizations, secure backup serves as a last defense against ransomware disruption.
Best Practices for Ransomware Recovery
Ransomware has matured into a formidable business model in recent years, launching widespread and costly attacks across all industries. He SonicWall Cyber Threat Report 2022 indicates a staggering rate of 19 ransomware attacks per second, highlighting the critical need for fortified defenses. A solid recovery plan is essential for IT teams to mitigate the impacts of attacks and quickly resume operations.
Complete prevention of cyberattacks is unfeasible; therefore, “recovery” becomes essential. Backups are recognized as one of the primary strategies for countering ransomware, and frequent and secure backups are critical for effective recovery, reducing downtime, and protecting against data loss.
Ransomware recovery is a complex task for affected organizations. Synology has summarized the process into seven key components of an effective recovery plan:
- Eliminate data silos: Modern businesses use tools across multiple platforms and overlooking any one of them can lead to ransomware risk. Comprehensive backup systems must cover all data.
- Fast and efficient backups: With the growth of enterprise data and its applications, such as cloud storage and IoT, the volume of backup data increases. Enterprises require systems capable of fast and efficient backups to reduce recovery point objective (RPO) intervals.
- Keep backups longer: Since ransomware can hide for 30 to 90 days, it is vital to securely store backup data for sufficient periods to ensure a clean recovery and uninterrupted business.
- Periodically validate the restoreability of backups: To prepare for unexpected ransomware attacks, organizations should frequently test the recoverability of their backup data, ensuring reliability and rapid recovery capabilities in a threat scenario.
- Isolated and secure backups: To counter ransomware's dual strategy of encrypting original data and deleting backups, enterprise backups must be secure, tamper-proof, and isolated from physical or network threats, ensuring that data restored are always accessible and clean.
- Fast and adaptive recovery: For organizations suffering from ransomware attacks, maintaining operations depends on rapid recovery and flexibility. It is essential to enable instant restore to reduce recovery time objective (RTO) and support cross-platform capabilities to effectively counter single-platform ransomware threats.
- Simplified and optimized management: As IT complexity grows, so does the risk of human error in backup management, a potential ransomware vulnerability. Centralized backup management, providing visibility and tracking, is essential to ensure all systems operate correctly and securely.
How Synology helps businesses with ransomware recovery
As ransomware threats increase, strong data protection is paramount. Millions are lost annually to these attacks, and organizations must be prepared to counter numerous threats with effective defense strategies. Synology is at the forefront and offers comprehensive data protection to thwart these types of attacks. Its solutions ensure security, availability and resilience, promoting rapid recovery to maintain operational continuity and providing a secure buffer against cyber incursions.
As ransomware threats increase dramatically, businesses require robust data protection more than ever to ensure security, availability, and rapid recovery.
Following recommended best practices, Synology offers comprehensive data protection solutions designed to combat ransomware. As organizations face increasing cyber attacks, solutions like Synology's are crucial to establishing defensive layers and establishing a robust “Ransomware Recovery Plan” to seamlessly bolster defenses.
Since data is the primary target of ransomware, adopting strong protection is key to resilience. Synology equips businesses to protect their data, safeguard backups, and quickly restore systems in the event of an attack.
To learn more about how Synology can provide a comprehensive solution to help combat the ransomware threat, visit the Synology website.
