Companies face an evolving cyber threat landscape and many modern attacks target an organization’s data. Implementing a Cyber Resilience program with cyber vaulting and other advanced recovery strategies can help to manage the risks that these threats pose.
Why is Data Resiliency Necessary?
Organizations are faced with a wide range of cyber threats with various purposes, as disruptive and destructive attacks have become increasingly common. Ransomware has emerged as one of the leading cyber threats, and a growing number of threat actors are turning to data destruction to disrupt the ability to operate.
Ransomware and wiper malware have the capacity to render data permanently inaccessible. While the goal of ransomware is to coerce the victim into paying the ransom to recover their data, paying the ransom does not always achieve the desired result. On average, organizations that pay the ransom only recover about 61% of their data.
Cyber threat actors are looking to maximize their impact and, in the case of a ransomware attack, the probability and size of a payout. This means that they will target an organization’s most valuable data and most critical resources. Destruction of this data could disrupt operations, destroy competitive advantage, or drive a company out of business entirely.
Advanced Recovery Strategies for Cyber Resiliency
These attacks can be avoided through anti-phishing, zero trust, data security, and other solutions. If the ransomware attack does succeed, there are policies that can be put in place to restore data from backups rather than pay the ransom.
However, this approach doesn’t always work. Ransomware operators are aware of this process and will often target an organization’s backups for encryption, as well. If this happens, there may be no choice but to pay the ransom.
Cyber vaulting is an advanced recovery strategy designed to address the worst-case scenario, in which an organization’s most critical data and components, including its normal backups, are affected by a ransomware or wiper attack. A cyber vault stores a copy of the information that can restore operations—critical data, system configuration information, etc.—at a location isolated from the rest of an organization’s infrastructure. If existing recovery strategies fail to restore data and operations after an attack, the cyber vault can be opened to recover an organization’s critical information.
How MorganFranklin Can Help
A cyber vault adds an important layer of protection for recovering from a ransomware or data destruction attack, so it needs to work properly and focus on the most critical elements. To be effective, a cyber vault needs to properly protect the stored data against ransomware and enable rapid restoration in the event of an incident. Often, this includes the ability to scan data for malware or evidence of encryption by ransomware before allowing it to enter the secure vault environment.
MorganFranklin experts can help your organization design a cyber vaulting strategy. This includes not only selecting the best cyber vault for your purposes but also identifying the data that should be stored within and defining processes for securely moving data from production environments to the vault.
