- 66% of organizations woke up to a ransomware attack in 2022, and 76% had their data encrypted1.
- Organizations need data backup and ransomware recovery solutions.
- Backup solutions commonly lack automation, orchestration, scale, and lower recovery times found in modern ransomware and disaster recovery solutions.
- Ransomware recovery is complex—you don’t simply recover from the most recent backup or snapshot.
- VMware Ransomware Recovery is a modern solution that helps minimize downtime and increase the odds of a successful recovery from a ransomware attack.
Data backups are like insurance policies for businesses. They ensure that an organization’s crucial data isn’t permanently lost in an unexpected mishap such as system failure, human error, or cyber-attack. Are data backups alone enough to protect your business’s critical data? The short answer is no. To truly secure your organization’s data integrity, you need a comprehensive plan, including disaster and ransomware recovery.
Understanding Data Backups
Data backups create copies of your data and store them locally, offsite, and possibly in a cloud platform. Some might ask why you would store backup data onsite. The answer is faster restoration times for cases such as accidentally deleting a file. Backup data must be stored offsite, as well, to cover disaster recovery scenarios. However, data backups primarily address data protection, not rapid recovery at scale and continuity of operations.
The Role of Disaster Recovery
While backups are focused on storing copies of your data, disaster recovery involves strategies and procedures to recover and maintain business operations after a disaster. This could be a hardware failure, a flood, a fire, or, more commonly, a manufactured catastrophe, such as a ransomware attack.
Disaster recovery plans outline how to quickly resume operations after a disaster, minimizing downtime and data loss. They cover everything from restoring data and applications, rerouting network traffic, shifting workloads to alternative data centers, and even including manual workarounds if the systems are down. Automating recovery processes reduces downtime and risk. Without a disaster recovery plan, your organization might spend days or weeks restoring normal operations. This can result in costly downtime, lost business opportunities, and reputational damage.
VMware offers disaster recovery solutions to automate the recovery of virtual machines. One option is disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offerings such as VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery and VMware Site Recovery. These solutions reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining a disaster recovery site through per-virtual machine replication capabilities and by recovering workloads in public clouds. DRaaS solutions from VMware can protect on-premises and cloud-based workloads.
VMware Site Recovery Manager provides fast and reliable failover for those who prefer or require on-premises to on-premises disaster recovery. Site Recovery Manager works with vSphere Replication and array-based replication to automate the recovery and fail-back of virtual machine workloads across on-premises locations.
The Necessity of Ransomware Recovery
One of the most significant threats to businesses worldwide is ransomware, malicious software that blocks access to an application and data until the money is paid. The implications of a ransomware attack can be catastrophic, with victims facing potential data loss, business disruption, and financial damage.
Ransomware recovery is an extension of disaster recovery that specifically focuses on strategies to recover from a ransomware attack. Unlike traditional disaster recovery, ransomware recovery must also consider the complexities introduced by encryption and the presence of malicious software. It involves restoring data and removing any lingering malware to prevent reinfection.
Recovering from a ransomware infection is more complex than the relatively simple task of restoring systems from the latest backup copies. Ransomware can lie dormant on systems for days or weeks, which means recent backups are also infected. Administrators must determine when the infection occurred and restore a backup copy made before the infection occurred. Performing multiple restores for every compromised virtual machine until “clean” copies are found is incredibly time-consuming.
Figure 1. Ransomware in backup data.
Regarding ransomware detection, the simple act of scanning a file, including virtual disks (VMDKs), might not detect the presence of ransomware. Some ransomware strains, such as file-less attacks, are not detected by traditional malware scans. Next-generation antivirus combined with live behavioral analysis is the best method for finding ransomware. This involves powering on the virtual machines, checking for malware in memory, and observing suspect network traffic, such as connections to ransomware sources on the Internet.
Another consideration is the environment where these recoveries are taking place. This environment must be isolated from the production environment. Reinfection can occur if compromised systems are restored from backup and connected to the production network. An isolated recovery environment (IRE) prevents reinfection.
Figure 2. Recovering from ransomware in an isolated recovery environment.
Finally, backup data must be immutable. It is common for ransomware to target production workloads and backup copies simultaneously. Backup data must be stored in a secure location disconnected from the production environment to preserve data integrity.
The Synergy of Backups and Ransomware Recovery
Backups, disaster recovery, and ransomware recovery are complementary parts of a complete data protection strategy. While backups help prevent data loss, ransomware recovery procedures help ensure business continuity and minimize downtime and data loss after a disaster or cyber-attack.
VMware Ransomware Recovery provides safe, controlled recovery from modern ransomware with purpose-built, fully managed ransomware recovery-as-a-service. These are the key features and benefits:
- Managed Recovery Environment: A safe, controlled, isolated recovery environment (IRE) secured, built, and managed by VMware in VMware Cloud on AWS.
- Live Behavioral Analysis: Identify file-less attacks with embedded Next-Gen AV and Behavioral Analysis of powered-on workloads.
- Ransomware Recovery Workflow: Step-by-step guided workflows that integrate identification, validation, and restoration of recovery points within a single UI.
- Push-Button VM Network Isolation: Prevent reinfection by Isolating virtual machines from one another during restore operations and prevent lateral movement of ransomware back to the production environment.
- Guided Restore Point Selection: Speed up the selection of restore point candidates with insights such as data rate of change and file entropy.
- Immutable, Air-Gapped Recovery Points: Snapshots are stored in a secure, VMware-managed Cloud File System to preserve data integrity.
Having these solutions in place does not guarantee immunity from disasters or cyber threats, but it provides a robust framework for recovery. It enables organizations to swiftly bounce back from disruptions, safeguarding their operations, reputation, and bottom line. Remember, it’s not just about surviving the storm but thriving in the aftermath. Don’t just back up your data—ensure your business can recover, too.
Get started today with the VMware Cloud DR Planner.
