New Methods to Stop Ransomware Attacks,Security and Storage Finally Create a Sensible Union,Backup's Two-Pronged Response to R

New Methods to Stop Ransomware Attacks Ransomware represents one of the primary threats every size organization currently faces. The latest surveys reveal the percentage of businesses experiencing ransomware attacks may be higher than anyone initially thought. These statistics suggest it is only matter of when, not if, an organization experiences a ransomware attack. While organizations may first turn to cybersecurity and backup software to prevent and recover from these attacks, new options exist. Among them, email data protection software and object-based networked storage offer organizations new and better ways to respond. The Inevitability of a Ransomware Attack Any organization that assumes (or hopes) it will never experience a ransomware attack better re-think that position. Recent reports reveal as many as 50 percent or more of US organizations have already experienced a ransomware attack. An April 2020 survey published by the Safety Detectives found over 50 percent of US organizations experienced an attack in the past 12 months. A separate Cyber Insurance Claims Report by Coalition found a lower, but still disturbingly high, number of ransomware attacks. It estimated, based upon the number of claims, that 20 percent of all US businesses experienced a ransomware attack. Whether one believes the higher percentage or the lower one, they both illustrate the high number of ransomware attacks. These serve to put organizations on notice to take steps to defend against them. Cybersecurity and Backup Software Good First Steps Cybersecurity and backup software represent two first steps every organization should take. Cybersecurity software may take the form of anti-virus software, firewalls, security incident and event management (SIEM) software. All these forms of cybersecurity software help to detect and prevent a ransomware attack from occurring in the first place. Unfortunately, due to its rapidly changing nature, cybersecurity software cannot catch every strain of ransomware. Odds are some new strain of ransomware will elude detection and detonate. In this scenario, organizations should have backup software in place as a second line of defense to recover encrypted files. The Lingering Challenges The lingering challenges with these two common methods used to defeat ransomware are as follows: Ransomware frequently enters an organization through an email message. Cybersecurity software may not always detect which attachments or links in an email message contain ransomware. Further, many email messages appear to come from legitimate sources. These include banks, government agencies, technology providers, and even from people within the organization. All it takes is one person to inadvertently open a file or click on a link and the ransomware launches. Backups typically only run once a day. Many organizations only back up their data once a day so any data created since the last backup may be lost. Further, depending on the solution, it can take some time to locate and recover the original data. Closing the Data Protection Gap In response to these challenges, organizations now have access to new technologies that help close this data protection gap. They may find these in the following two forms: Email backup software that contains anti-ransomware capabilities. Organizations may deploy email backup software such as SpinOne that detects ransomware, stops it, and even restores encrypted files and emails. Designed to protect G Suite and Office 365 environments, SpinOne represents one of the first solutions to bring together email backup and anti-ransomware capabilities. By deploying it, organizations may detect and stop ransomware at the point where it most likely enters their organization: their email system. Use network attached, object-based storage systems. Organizations of almost all sizes use network attached storage (NAS) for file sharing and data storage. Recently, object-based storage has entered this market offering CIFS and NFS interfaces to facilitate easy and fast deployment. Sometimes perceived as slower than NAS systems, object- based systems have significantly increased their performance in recent years using flash drives. Using flash-powered object-based storage in lieu of NAS systems gives organizations access to some of object-based storage’s more attractive features. Its data immutability and snapshots specifically stand out. These two features help ensure that should ransomware attack, organizations may recover data since the system stores the data in an immutable format. Nasuni stands out as such a solution that enterprises may deploy at scale. Respect Ransomware’s Threat, Do Not Fear It Ransomware rightfully causes concern for organizations of all sizes and they should respect the harm it can do. However, the threat ransomware presents should serve as a motivation for organizations to act. Implementing best practices of cybersecurity and backup software along with these two new technologies from Nasuni and SpinOne equip organizations with a robust defense against ransomware. By implementing these techniques, organizations may move from fearing a ransomware attack to confidently knowing that they are positioned to stop it and recover from it should one occur. Security and Storage Finally Create a Sensible Union Storage and security represent two technologies that have circled each for nearly two decades with negligible success in coming together. That may have finally changed this week. StorMagic’s acquisition of KeyNexus represents a union of security and storage that finally makes sense for everyone involved. Security and Storage: A Dubious History The technology industry has talked about – and attempted to – unite security and storage for at least the past 20 years. In almost all cases, those efforts went mostly for naught. The last few years alone saw providers that once attempted to merge security and storage go their separate ways. The rationale for them uniting in the first place never really panned out. Initially, they envisioned heightened synergies between security and storage. Yet, ultimately, these synergies never came to fruition. Different people in enterprises made the final decisions on each that inhibited their integration. Further, storage technologies often ran in secure, isolated environments, and security solutions did not properly address key management for every environment or workflow. As a result, security did not provide enough value-add to storage or vice versa for them to ever fully unite. Different Environment, Different Requirements Despite security and storage’s problematic past, StorMagic’s acquisition of KeyNexus suddenly makes sense. The logic behind this acquisition stems from the respective environments in which each one operates. The StorMagic SvSAN storage technology operates primarily in edge computing environments. Edge environments differ significantly from core data center environments where enterprises have traditionally deployed storage technologies. In these edge environments, enterprises want their storage to have all the attributes that their core data center technologies possess. They include high availability, reliability, recoverability, manageability, simplicity and scalability, among others. However now, unlike the past, they also include security among the “other” features that they want storage solutions in edge environments to possess. Enterprise Key Management an Edge Storage Requirement Storing data in an edge environment presents a unique security challenge that rarely exists in data center environments. I cannot think of a single instance where I heard of someone walking out of a data center with a server or storage array. Even if it has occurred, it is a rarity. The exact opposite situation exists in edge locations. SvSAN may be deployed into edge environments that have minimal or no security. Further, SvSAN requires only nominal amounts of server hardware to operate – as little as two 1U servers. As a result, anyone can potentially and literally walk off with the entire edge solution – servers, storage and the software within (hypervisor, SvSAN, applications, etc…). While StorMagic SvSAN offers data encryption as an optional feature, that only partially solves the security problem. StorMagic did not natively offer any key management functionality. Further exacerbating the problem, SvSAN often gets deployed into enterprises with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of locations. Trying to create and manage separate keys in all these locations makes it challenging if not impossible for enterprises to properly implement and manage. Enter SvKMS This situation explains why a storage company’s StorMagic( ) acquisition of a security company (KeyNexus) finally makes sense. The KeyNexus Unified Key Manager, now available as SvKMS, provides enterprises with the key management functionality that their edge locations need. Rather than each edge location needing to assign and manage its own encryption keys, enterprises can centrally deploy SvKMS. Once deployed, they can use it to assign keys to all their SvSAN-based edge locations. Used this way, they can confidently turn on SvSAN’s encryption feature. Using SvKMS, they know they can decrypt data at any of the sites since they have the keys to unlock it. StorMagic’s SvKMS simultaneously solves a larger industry challenge. Encryption is everywhere these days – at the edge, in the datacenter, and in the cloud. StorMagic SvKMS is an Enterprise Key Management system that can manage encryption keys in any and all

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