By Curtis Preston, Chief Technical Evangelist, Druva
Today, organisations are worried about their data and losing it to ransomware. Ransomware attacks are surging around the world, and as hard as it is to imagine, governments have warned that this may get worse due to the crisis in Ukraine. This has led to a need for a solution that can ensure business critical data is always protected, accessible and actionable.
With ransomware on the rise, the term ‘immutability’ has become the current buzzword. Immutable means something that cannot be changed. The term should be a binary attribute – either you are immutable or not, but it’s not that simple. When it comes to organisations’ data, immutable backup often seems like the perfect solution, but it’s harder to achieve than one would think.
Unfortunately, nothing in today’s age is truly “immutable.” For instance, if a hacker can get their hands on your storage, its immutability won’t last.
Let’s highlight the threats to your backups:
The two things that can happen to backups are corruption or premature deletion. Corruption of data occurs through encryption or any process that changes the content of the backup file. Premature deletion can take place within the backup system or in the operating system of the backup.
The three most common ways backup data can be damaged:
Social engineering: One of the easiest ways that backup data can be damaged is through social engineering – a tactic used by bad actors that tricks users into making security mistakes or giving away sensitive information. The most common type of social engineering is phishing, which is a primary method ransomware uses to infect one’s system.
Disasters: If the backup systems are in the same data centre as one’s production system, any disaster such as a fire, flood, or hurricane n will damage both systems. A perfect example of this was what happened in the OVH fire, where the cloud provider’s production and backup systems were destroyed by the blaze.
Internal threats: Disgruntled employees pose a significant threat. There have been thousands of disgruntled employee attacks throughout history, and many more that have gone unreported. System and backup system administrators can sometimes get upset and may take out their anger on their employer. A disgruntled employee can be quite hard to stop, as they often have high levels of access to very sensitive data.
Although data is more at risk than ever before, the good news is that some data protection systems are more immutable than others. These systems typically include the following features.
Multi-factor authentication
A simple login based authentication is not a favourable feature for backup immutability. All it takes is one stolen password or hacked account and your backup system will be gone forever.Multi-factor authentication is perhaps the single most important feature your backup system should haveIt should be built into every part of the system where users are required to authenticate themselves.
Role-based authentication
Role-based authentication has been a great security enhancement in backup products. Its goal is to limit the radius of something bad happening in an account, either because of a mistake of the admin or the account being compromised through social engineering or a disgruntled employee. It uses the security practice of least privilege, which will give each person the level of access they need to perform their job and nothing more.
Immutable file systems
Immutable file systems help prevent ransomware from spreading from a protected system to a backup copy. Depending on how the immutable file system is built, it will not be able to protect from a system administrator accidentally or maliciously deleting the backups. So while immutable file systems are a great feature, it is not a foolproof way toward immutability.
Cloud-based object storage
Object storage in the cloud offers advantages such as easily detecting and repairing bit rot using one of the replicated copies and provides natural protection against ransomware because ransomware only knows how to write to file system data. With cloud-based storage, even a fully authenticated, high-ranked IT executive would not be able to delete objects. It is truly immutable.
Backup deletion protection
Backup deletion protection (i.e backup immutability) helps remove another layer of risk. It protects against an administrator from accidentally or maliciously deleting backups via their backup interface. However, if their backups are stored in LINUX or Windows systems they could still be attacked via the methods mentioned above.
Backup recycle bin
Backup recycle bins provide additional protection against an over-ambitious administrator trying to do some house cleaning or a disgruntled employee trying to do the company damage before they leave the organisation.
Data protection-as-a-service
A data protection-as-a-service (DPaaS) stores backup data in cloud accounts behind multiple levels of security. Only DPaaS can help businesses achieve true resiliency, and protect against all of the risks mentioned above. For example, a ransomware infection cannot spread to backups stored in the service provider and the immutable features built into the product cannot be circumvented via physical access, hacked accounts, privilege escalation, etc.
Let’s call it what it is: no solution will ever be 100% perfectly immutable, despite what some may claim. However, there are data protection systems that are more immutable than others. Now that you know which features to look out for, celebrate World Backup Day by making the right choice before it’s too late.
