HOW TO MODERNISE YOUR CYBER RECOVERY STRATEGY IN FIVE STEPS

Across industries and among organisations of all sizes, cyber attacks are multiplying. Cyber Security Ventures estimates that a cyber or ransomware malware attack occurs every 11 seconds. Attacks are almost continuous, and the associated economic costs are enormous. According to a report on the subject, cyberattacks are expected to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion in 2015.

As businesses become increasingly aware of the cybersecurity risks that threaten their critical operations, IT security has become a particularly important part of corporate digital strategy. However, many organizations lack confidence in their data protection solutions. Dell Technologies’ 2022 Global Data Protection Index reports that cyberattacks accounted for 48% of all breach attempts last year (up from 37% in 2021), ranking first among all other causes of data breaches.

The survey also reveals that 85% of organizations using multiple vendors for data protection see a benefit from reducing their number of vendors. Furthermore, it reveals that organizations using a single vendor for data protection incurred 34% less in costs to recover from cyberattacks or other cyber incidents than those using multiple vendors. To create a more cyber-resilient approach to data protection, companies can modernize and automate their recovery and business continuity strategies and leverage the latest intelligent tools to detect and protect against cyber threats.

Here are five components of a proven and modern cyber recovery strategy:

1. Automated data warehouses

Cyber resilience cannot be achieved without one key component – the data repository for recovery from cyber attacks. It offers multiple layers of protection, providing resilience against cyber attacks even from an insider threat. It creates an additional copy of critical data away from the attack surface by physically isolating it in one secure part of the data center and requiring separate security credentials and multi-factor authentication for access. Additional precautions include automated network partitioning and isolation and the removal of management interfaces that could be compromised. If a cyberattack occurs, you can quickly identify a clean copy of your data, restore your critical systems and get your business back up and running.

Data repositories are used to great effect among public and private sector organisations. These companies often use them to securely store updated copies of their most critical data and applications. If a ransomware or data destruction attack affects data and applications in core production environments, threat actors still cannot access the contents of the data warehouse. After the attack, as part of the incident response and recovery process, clean copies of data and applications stored in the data warehouse are used to restore the production environment.

2. Data isolation and management

Similarly, providing an isolated data center environment that is physically separated from corporate and backup networks and restricted to users other than those with appropriate access permissions represents another method of providing an impenetrable cyber recovery strategy. By isolating critical data, identifying suspicious activity, and expediting data recovery, enterprises can more easily achieve cyber resiliency with this approach.

3. Intelligent analysis and tools

In addition, machine learning and full content indexing with powerful analytics within repository safety represent effective threat detection tools. This also includes automated integrity checks to determine if data has been impacted by malware and tools to aid remediation if necessary.

4. Recovery and Remediation

If an incident has indeed occurred, remediation consists of workflows and tools that perform dynamic data recovery to bring business-critical systems back online quickly and with confidence. This includes a comprehensive data protection methodology, as well as performing damage assessments and computer forensics to provide the organization with an assured and most reliable path to restore business-critical systems.

5. Solution planning and design

Finally, expert guidance and services can help organizations determine which business-critical systems need protection and can create dependency maps for related applications and services, as well as the infrastructure needed to recover them. For example, Zero Trust is a cybersecurity model that changes the way organizations approach security from relying solely on perimeter protection to a proactive strategy that only allows pre-approved activities across ecosystems and data highways. It allows organizations to better align their cybersecurity strategies across the data center, cloud and perimeter. Such processes also generate remediation requirements and design alternatives while identifying the technologies to analyze, host and protect data along with a business case and deployment schedule.

Cyber resilience requires a layered approach to cybersecurity. In addition to advanced threat protection and security training for employees, a strong cyber recovery strategy can strengthen cyber resiliency by protecting backup systems from failure and enabling rapid recovery of business-critical systems, applications and operations after an attack. In short, Cyber Resiliency is a strategy that incorporates people, processes and technology into a holistic framework that protects an entire business, organization or entity. This strategy allows businesses to prepare for and recover quickly from disruptions caused by cyber attacks.

Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery solutions enable cyber resilience by protecting and isolating critical data from ransomware and other cyber threats. This Dell solution uses machine learning to identify suspicious activity and enable recovery of known good data and resume normal business operations quickly and with confidence.

PowerProtect Cyber Recovery protects data and provides recovery across on-premises and multiple cloud environments including AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Further information here.