As Ransomware Attacks Worsen, Actifio Helping Immunize Organizations From ‘The Most Likely Disaster Recovery Event in 2020’

Importance of Data Immutability Highlighted at Actifio’s Virtual Data Driven 2020 Conference

From the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the sudden rise of remote work,  ransomware attacks surged as employers struggle to seal off the vulnerabilities of a dispersed workforce and the critically important data sources they must be able to access to drive their businesses forward. Of all the approaches that attempt to protect these organizations from ransomware, the data immutability characteristics of Actifio may make it the cleanest and fastest path to ransomware recovery.

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The role that Actifio, the pioneer of multi-cloud copy data management software, is playing in immunizing organizations from ransomware was highlighted at Data Driven 2020: The Next Normal, Actifio’s annual conference that drew record virtual attendance from IT and business leaders seeking better ways to deliver value and impact during a challenging year.

During a Data Driven 2020 session entitled, “Reduce the Stress Caused By Worrying About Ransomware Attacks,” Jarom Olsen, Actifio Solutions Architect, described a recent situation that illustrated the Actifio advantage. “Most recently, we have a customer in northern California who experienced a ransomware attack. They had backup copies provided by another provider in addition to the Actifio copies. The only data that was not susceptible to the ransomware attack and was protected was the data on the Actifio copies. They were able to mount within minutes and realize the benefits of using a solution like Actifio in a ransomware situation. The other provider that was in the environment fell on its face, became infiltrated by the encryption that was associated with the production dataset, and did not allow for quick recovery of their data. This highlights how Actifio can help solve ransomware problems.”

Olson continued, “We also have the capability of operating the Actifio solution on premises and in the cloud. This gives you even further capabilities. If you decided not to recover on premises, or if your data were in one cloud provider and needed to be moved to another one, Actifio gives you the full suite of capabilities to perform those actions. We can take VM and physical servers and change them to cloud instances. We can move data from cloud to cloud, but keeping that recovery time objective and that recovery point objective extremely low in the case of a ransomware attack, you have that protection.”

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Reporting from the Data Driven 2020 conference, SearchDisasterRecovery, a TechTarget publication, wrote, “Ransomware is not only here to stay, it is thriving. So you need a plan for ransomware recovery. That data protection push was a key takeaway from the virtual Actifio Data Driven conference.”

“The coronavirus pandemic led to a dramatic transition of the workforce from the office to a home setting,” continued the article. “As sophistication within the ransomware community has grown, a major goal for a business is to give itself as much of a chance for recovery as possible. Immutable data protection, which locks backups from potential deletion or modification, is an important piece of ransomware recovery.”

In the article, Actifio’s Olson said the estimated global damage from ransomware in 2020 is $20 billion, up from $8 billion in 2018, citing statistics from cybersecurity firm PurpleSec. “It is not a matter of if an attack is going to take place, but when,” he said. “Everyone is at some point going to be susceptible to a ransomware attack. The average downtime cost per ransomware incident has soared, from $46,800 in 2018 to $141,000 in 2019 to $283,000 in 2020, according to PurpleSec.”

Another Data Driven 2020 session, “Be Informed & Prepared: Ransomware Will Be The Most Likely DR Event in 2020,” discusses how “threat actors are getting sophisticated in how they are breaching networks and locking down data.”

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