Is Your Backup Strategy Ransomware-Resilient?

Among the various types of cyber attacks, ransomware stands out as a significant threat to businesses today. Ransomware is a form of malware that threatens to publish or permanently block access to a victim’s data unless a ransom is paid. 59% of organizations were targeted by ransomware last year, and though the attack rate has slightly decreased, ‌overall recovery costs (excluding ransom payments) have surged to $2.73 million, a 50% increase from 2023.

How ransomware impacts data resilience

The most immediate consequence of a ransomware attack is the ransom demand, typically paid in cryptocurrency. However, the true cost often lies in the downtime of the attacked system and corresponding data recovery costs. On average, downtime costs can be five to ten times higher than the ransom itself. Alarmingly, only 57% of compromised data is recovered after an attack.

In today’s data-driven world, data is the lifeblood of companies. Its loss or compromise can severely impact their ability to operate. This is particularly true for software-as-a-service (SaaS) environments, which are crucial for managing and leveraging data insights and informing AI agents. Organizations that effectively transform information into strategic assets gain a clear competitive edge. That’s why it’s critical that you put in place measures to protect your SaaS data from cyberthreats like ransomware. One of the most effective ways you can do this is by backing up your data.

The role of backups in ransomware recovery

Backups are essential for ensuring business continuity in the event of a ransomware attack or any other type of data incident, enabling organizations to restore operations and data to their prior states. Yet, because of their value, backups are also prime targets for ransomware, with bad actors hoping to maximize their impact and threaten continuity. In fact, 94% of ransomware victims last year said attackers targeted their backups, and 57% of those attempts were successful.

According to Sophos, an IT Security company, “compromising an organization’s backups enables ransomware actors to restrict their victim’s ability to recover encrypted data and in doing so dials up the pressure to pay.”

Despite how prevalent ransomware attacks and other similar threats have become, most firms are ill-prepared to handle cybersecurity-induced disasters. Almost half of all companies surveyed test backups for recoverability only twice a year, or less often.

How to keep ransomware from reaching your backups

Organizations need to take special care in thinking about their backup and recovery processes and infrastructure. Here are some key requirements you should look for in a backup and recovery solution to protect against ransomware-induced downtime.

Foundational cloud infrastructure

Cloud-based backup applications are typically built using underlying, turnkey cloud infrastructures like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Organizations should consider not only which cloud infrastructures their backup provider has chosen for deployment of their backup solution but the degree to which they’re taking advantage of the security and protection measures available on those infrastructures.

Logging, monitoring, and alerting

While the security capabilities of underlying cloud infrastructures provide a great foundation of ransomware prevention and detection measures, organizations considering cloud backup solutions should ensure that their backup providers take additional measures as well, such as the use of monitoring, logging, and alerting tools that can flag abnormal ransomware or even data activity.

Encryption

Organizations should also ensure that their backup providers leverage encryption to protect backup data. This provides an additional safeguard that potential leakage of data doesn’t result in exposure of data, as the backed up data wouldn’t be viewable by malicious actors. Encrypting your data makes a significant difference, as 98% of organizations were able to recover encrypted data without exposure risk.

Regular testing

Organizations evaluating cloud backup providers should also consider whether providers regularly test the measures they have in place to ensure security controls are properly applied and operating effectively. Adequate protection against ransomware threats requires the coordination of multiple technical safeguards as well as operational procedures, and regular testing is essential to ensure that systems that are designed well also operate well.

Precise recovery

Precise and rapid recovery capabilities drastically reduce the time it takes to bring systems back online. This minimizes operational disruption, financial losses due to downtime, and damage to the company’s reputation. Additionally, when a company can confidently and quickly restore its systems and data to a pre-attack state, the need to pay the ransom is eliminated.

Third-party certification

Finally, organizations looking to ensure their cloud-based backup providers have adequate ransomware prevention measures in place should look for third-party certifications of the provider’s information security practices. This can provide reliable evidence that the vendor can protect the data entrusted to them by having the appropriate controls, measures and programs sometimes needed by industry or government regulations.

How Salesforce Backup & Recover helps companies keep their data resilient

Backup & Recover is designed to help organizations maintain data resilience and recover quickly from data loss, whether it occurs from a cyberattack like ransomware, or if it’s due to other incidents, like simple human error. The solution applies data security best practices at every layer and includes comprehensive logging, monitoring, and alerting across applications, networks, and operating systems. All backup files are encrypted at rest, significantly reducing the risk of exposure in the event of a breach. 

When it comes to recovery, Backup & Recover makes it easy to restore exactly the data you need without overwriting new or valid data. Even complex or sensitive datasets with intricate relationships can be recovered safely and efficiently ensuring data integrity is maintained. Learn more about Backup & Recover today.