Shielding Backups from Ransomware: 5 Proven Protection Practices

Ransomware is increasingly dangerous, with cybercriminals increasingly sophisticated in using their scams to encrypt valuable data and demand ransom payments. You should shield your backups from these destructive attacks. Many established practices can be adopted for database protection that keep your backups safe and usable regardless of whether a ransomware attack occurs.

One practical approach is to keep your backups locally, in other words, not on a remote server or storage device that could become infected and yet still accessible. Alternatively, you can keep copies of your backups onsite in a safe location, such as a fireproof and lockable cabinet or drawer. This adds an extra layer of security. Even if your backups are compromised, their data remains protected. Access control measures mean unauthorized users cannot break into the backup systems or access your files.

Regularly testing that your backups can be recovered successfully is essential to ensure their efficacy in the event of a ransomware infection.

Implement Multi-Layer Security Strategy

A multi-layered security strategy is essential to defend against ransomware. Key components include:

Multi-Layered Security

A multi-layered security strategy means using a variety of security measures to protect your home or business. Some of the critical components include:

• Physical Security: Make sure that all around you have security. Install and utilize surveillance cameras around your property to discourage and keep an eye on any intruders or suspicious activity.
• Alarm System with Motion Detector and Door and Window Sensors: Install an alarm system equipped with motion sensors within the house and for the windows and doors.
• Access Control: Access control systems can be installed to let only some people into a property, using keyless entry or electronic locks.
• Security Lighting: Surround your home with movement-sensing lighting. Use an external storage service like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive. Download the app and set it to back up your files automatically. Encrypt your data before uploading for added security.
• Perimeter Fencing: Secureyour property with fencing and make it harder to access. Even better, consider fencing that is difficult to climb or high and would discourage entry attempts.
• Security door: Tough security screen doors can provide extra protection for your home, especially for external doors to stop forced intrusions.

Utilize Offline and Cloud Backups

To protect your backups, offline and cloud backups are crucial to ensure the safety of your data. Here’s how you can utilize both:

Offline Backups

Protect your data from ransomware by doing the following:

• Save information on an external hard drive or USB flash drive
• Back up important files regularly or use backup software
• Disconnect the backup drive when not in use to prevent malware attacks

Cloud Backups

Educating employees about phishing and social engineering is critical to securing your workplace. Here are some things to include in your training.

Sign up for a cloud storage service like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive.

Combining Both

Use offline backups for sensitive files or those you want to keep private. If you want them, use cloud backups for files accessed from multiple devices, even if you lose local backups. Regularly update and test both backups. Combining both methods protects against theft, hardware failure, or cyber-attacks.

Activate Retention and Versioning Policies

It’s crucial to enable versioning and set preservation policies when managing data in cloud storage systems like AWS S3 and Azure Blob Storage. This is a general summary.

AWS S3: Versioning:

• Go to the S3 Management Console.
• Click on the bucket for which you want to enable versioning.
• Choose the “Properties” tab.
• Under “Advanced settings,” select “Versioning.”
• Click “Enable versioning” and then “Save changes.”

Retention Policies:

• Go to the S3 Management Console.
• Click on the bucket for which you want to set a retention policy.
• Choose the “Management” tab.
• Click on “Create a retention policy.”
• Select the retention period and whether you want to lock objects from being deleted during the retention period.
• Click “Save changes.”

For Lifecycle Policies:

• Go to the S3 Management Console
• Click on the bucket you want to configure.
• Choose the “Management” tab.
• Click “Lifecycle”
• Click “Add lifecycle rule” and configure the rule to transition or expire objects based on your retention requirements.

Azure Blob Storage:

• To enable versioning for a particular container, click “Containers” and choose the desired container.
• Choose “Versioning” from the container’s properties and make it active.

Retention Policies:

Azure Blob Storage makes retention policies available via the “Legal Hold” and “Retention” capabilities.

For Legal Hold in Azure Blob Storage:

• Go to the Azure Storage account in the Azure portal.
• Select the container or blob you want to configure.
• Under “Blob Service,” select “Legal Hold.”
• Continually review and understand the implications of enabling these features, as they can affect your ability to modify or delete your data.

Review and understand the impacts of these features since they might affect your ability to add, update, or remove data.

Educate Employees About Phishing and Social Engineering

Inform staff members about social engineering and phishing. Preparing staff members for phishing and social engineering attacks is essential to maintaining workplace security. It would help if you incorporated the following into your training:

Common Tactics

Common phishing tactics include emails that appear from legitimate sources, contain links to fake websites, or request sensitive information with urgency.

Recognizing Phishing Attempts

It is crucial to train employees to recognize phishing red flags. They should look for suspicious email addresses, spelling/grammar errors, and requests for personal or sensitive information like payment details or social security numbers.

Social Engineering

It is the practice of deceiving people into disclosing passwords or opening dangerous email attachments to obtain sensitive information about them.

Stopping Phishing Attempts

Some strategies include using strong passwords and two-factor authentication, confirming the reliability of sources, and updating software and firmware.

Preventing Phishing Attacks

Strategies include:

• Verifying sources
• Using strong passwords and two-factor authentication
• Keeping software/firmware updated with patches

Reporting Phishing Attempts

Train employees to report potential phishing incidents to security or IT and ensure they’re familiar with the incident response plan if one exists.

Training And Awareness

Conduct regular education campaigns on phishing tactics and information security best practices. Provide refresher training on reporting suspected phishing incidents regularly.

Testing

Regularly assess user phishing awareness with simulation exercises, like test emails or practical tests. Provide specific training if users fall for social engineering ruses.

Regularly Test Backup and Recovery Procedures

Test backup and recovery procedures regularly.

Finally, you must verify your backup and recovery protocols to ensure that your data can be successfully retrieved during a disaster.

Schedule Regular Tests

Test backup and recovery procedures regularly to ensure data can be recovered effectively. Define procedures, verify data integrity after restores, and update as needed—train personnel on their roles.

Select a Test Environment

Use a test environment closely mirroring your production environment to ensure realistic tests and reduce complications when processes are rolled out.

Document detailed backup and recovery procedures when first defined. Keep them updated with any infrastructure, application, database, or system changes, whether on or off-premises.

Perform Full and Partial Restores

After documenting procedures, perform full and partial restores to verify data recovery within established RPO/RTOs. After each restore, verify data integrity to ensure no corruption occurred during backup or restore.

Update Procedures

Update backup and recovery procedures regularly based on changes. Distribute updates to those responsible and ensure they understand the revisions.

Train Personnel

Ensuring personnel understand their backup and recovery roles and can execute them error-free is critical to successful recovery.

Review Test Results

After each test, review predefined backup and recovery processes. Make improvements until the process works as expected, regardless of initial success in a test environment.

In Summary

It is vital to safeguard backups from ransomware attacks if data integrity is to be maintained and businesses cannot stand still. The five practices of protection provide evidence for this. It is essential to keep the backup software up to date and regularly patch patches. This will block any possibility that ransomware will exploit flaws in any products used to create data backups. Implementation of MFA and rigorous access restrictions can contribute additional technical defenses: the probability of unauthorized access to backup systems is reduced.

Moreover, keeping up regular backups and storing them in separately protected environments is also anti-ransomware. If we take the same measures as above, it is good for both ourselves and others too. Information sharing is vital in this scenario. Education for employees in added protections against fraudulent activity provides another line of defense.

By instituting the above protections, organizations can increase their ability to withstand ransomware attacks and diminish the impact of data being lost.