PC PORTAL

Experienced. Trusted. Solutions.

IT Security

By

Redundancy for resilience: The importance of layered protection in the cloud

At Carbonite + Webroot, we’re always preaching about the importance of layering security solutions. Because here’s the truth: data’s always at risk. Whether from cybercriminals, everyday mishaps or mother nature, businesses can put up all the defenses they want but disaster only has to successfully strike once.

The global pandemic means more work is being conducted in the cloud, so this is no time to be lax with the security of cloud backups. Unless protection is redundant, organizations risk of losing mission-critical data – for minutes, days or permanently depending on the disaster – and putting their survival at risk.

That’s why layered protection in the cloud is so critical to cyber resilience. Without it, any one failure can be catastrophic.

So, how’s it done?

Let’s start with endpoints

For organizations managing hundreds or thousands of endpoints, backing each up to the cloud is important for keeping employees productive in the case of hardware failure, device theft, damage or malicious insiders. It’s easy to see how a laptop can be damaged, so it’s obvious for most that files stored locally should be backed up to the cloud.

But it’s also important to recognize that work done in the cloud should also be backed up. For example, one of the world’s most popular productivity tools for office workers, Microsoft 365, increasingly carries out its core functions in the cloud. But it has some serious gaps in terms of backup capabilities.

The average endpoint user may not know or care which important work files are stored, so long as they’re there when needed. This makes it important that Microsoft 365 data is backed up to the cloud – regardless of whether the user is aware if updates are being made locally or if the location is using its cloud capabilities.

Finally, but in the other direction, cloud-based cybersecurity offers another form of data security from the cloud. This method avoids the risk of endpoints relying on out-of-date file definitions of known-bad files, instead relying on near real-time threat telemetry from the cloud. This allows for the near real-time protection of all endpoints using the solution once a threat is identified.

But must also include servers

It’s less obvious to many of us that servers are at risk of becoming ground zero for data loss as well. Hardware sometimes fails, power cords can be tripped over, or worse…natural disasters can strike data centers, wiping out servers through fires, floods or other types of damage.

What good are endpoints without the servers that feed them information? Cloud computing technology offers a handful of flexible opportunities for backing up data housed on servers.

On-premise servers – used to store data locally based a business’s preference, regulatory needs or other reasons – can and should still be backed up to the cloud in case of a localized outage. Usually this entails concentrating data within a single point of storage (a “vault”) that’s then bulk uploaded. This duplicated data can then be accessed in the event a physical location loses power or a fiber optic cable is severed by construction work, for example.

Off-premise server banks also can and should be protected by cloud backups. Many of these servers may store their data in public clouds, which are normally but not always highly reliable. Public cloud outages do happen. When they do, it pays to have another cloud backup solution to failover to so the business can continue to run.

Whether or not this data is stored in the cloud permanently or migrated there when needed, redundancy is established when on and off-premise server banks are backed up to the cloud.

Rounding out the redundancy is a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution. This form of high-availability replication anticipates a worst-case scenario for server data loss. With DRaaS, byte-level replication of changes on an organization’s systems are sent to the cloud. In the event of a disaster, you

Note that DRaaS is not to be confused with being a replacement for backup. These are two different solutions that can work perfectly well alongside each other. Backup should apply to every server in an environment and offers long term retention with flexible restore options.  DRaaS typically would be layered on top of backup, for the most mission critical servers, resulting in options to either restore from backup, or failover directly and rapidly to another cloud depending on the event that has rendered the production server or data inaccessible.

Maintain uptime, all the time

Threats to business data are all around us. Rates of ransomware are rising and remote workforces have ballooned since the outbreak of COVID-19. This is no time to trust in a single cloud as an organizational backup strategy. No single point of failure should keep users from accessing business-critical data. Luckily, there are many options for designed layered backup across clouds.  

The post Redundancy for resilience: The importance of layered protection in the cloud appeared first on Webroot Blog.

By

What’s the difference between high availability and backup again?

It’s not just that they’re making headlines more often. Ransomware rates really are rising. Given the recent spate of high-profile attacks, it’s worth remembering the difference between standard backup and high-availability replication.

Our research suggests that the costs of ransomware for businesses can amount to much more than an extortion payment. They include lost hours of productivity, reputational damage, compliance fines and more. But maintaining access to critical data at all times can undermine ransomware actors’ leverage over an organization, reduce recovery time and earn the good graces of regulators and the public.

Ultimately, doing so comes down to answering the question: what data does my business simply need to back up, and what data can my business simply not do without? Knowing the difference helps to determine the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for a given type of data or application.

A 24-hour recovery time may fall within the RTO for non-essential data and applications. For mission-critical data, on the other hand, a 24-hour recovery period may exceed the acceptable amount of time to be without access to data. It could drive up the cost of data breach significantly, perhaps even higher than a ransomware payment.

Also, it may come down to the amount of change-rate data that can be acceptability lost. Knowing the acceptable Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) can be as important as knowing the required RTOs.  For instance, a highly transactional system performing critical Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) could not afford the loss of data that occurred between backup cycles. 

Well-designed data backup plans tend to be a blend of both standard backup and high availability, so it helps to know the difference when determining which is the better fit for a given system, application or set of data.

Data backup

There are all sorts of good reasons to keep regular, reliable backups of business systems. These may concern the normal conveniences of document retention – not having to begin a project from scratch in the case of accidental deletion, for instance – or to satisfy industry or legal compliance regulations.

These backups are taken at pre-determined time intervals, typically once a day during non-working hours, and stored on a backup server. Often backups will be given an associated value called a retention.  A retention allows organization to keep certain backups for a longer period of time.  For instance, a business may decide it’s necessary to keep daily backups for a total of 30 days. But due to storage concerns, they will drop off the server on day 31. However, regulations or corporate policies may require keeping certain backups longer, so often they will designate a monthly of a yearly backup that has an extended retention for one or even up to seven years. 

Recently, backup servers have been targeted by ransomware actors.  Criminals will study an organization’s environment and specifically backup services. Therefore, it’s extremely important to have a backup for the backup. One of the preferred methods is a secondary cloud copy of the backup server.  Since the cloud copy sits on a separate network, it provides a layer of security making it more difficult to span the separate cloud network and target the secondary backup copy.

In most cases, backups like those discussed above have recovery times of hours for a localized power outage or even days for a flooded server room, for example. For an HR system, this RTO may be acceptable. For a point-of-sale system, this could mean significant lost revenue.

High availability

When a backup’s RTO and RPO time values do not meet the needs for recovering a company’s critical systems (OLTP servers, for instance), high-availability replication is an effective alternative for ensuring required operational performance levels are met. High-availability replication accomplishes this by keeping an exact copy of critical servers, maintained by real-time, byte-level replication, which remain powered off until needed. 

When that time comes, a failover procedure is initiated, and the copy assumes the role of the production system. The failover process typically occurs within a matter of a second or minutes, depending upon the server configuration or network latency. In cases of hardware failure or data center disasters, high-availability replication can stave off a data loss disaster.

However, since replication is real-time, an offline copy can be corrupted if the primary is attacked by ransomware. Therefore, system snapshots may be required to maintain clean point in time copies of the system. Snapshots are typically non-intrusive, do not noticeably delay replication and provide a failover with a better RPO than backup.

Like with backup, an off-site cloud solution can step in if on-site servers are out of commission. Latency can slightly lengthen recovery a small amount as the off-site cloud boots up, but the time to recovery still feels like a blip to users or customers.

For some organizations there may be no data critical enough to warrant implementing this high-availability architecture. For others, all data may be considered essential. For most, the reality will be fall somewhere in the middle. If companies are highly regulated or mandated by specific corporate retention requirements, a combination of high-availability replication and backup will likely exist for the same server.

Ensuring resilience against ransomware

In a blended backup/high-availability strategy, what matters most is deciding which systems are backed up by which before the worst happens. Whether handling backup for your own organization or for clients’, it’s important to have a well-tested backup plan in place that takes in RTOs based on acceptable amounts of downtime for data and applications.

The post What’s the difference between high availability and backup again? appeared first on Webroot Blog.

By

4 ways ransomware can cost your business (in addition to extortion)

Cybersecurity analysts are charting both a rise in ransomware incidents and in amounts cybercriminals are demanding from businesses to restore their data. That’s bad news in itself, but what’s often overlooked are the additional ways – beyond payments victims may or may not choose to make– victims pay for these attacks.

Our latest threat report found the average ransomware payment peaked in September 2020 at more than $230 thousand. But the ransom alone doesn’t tell the whole story. To do that, we conducted another study to tally and quantify the collateral damage from surging ransomware incidents and rising extortion amounts.

These are some of those affects inflating the price tag of an attack, which we call The Hidden Costs of Ransomware.

1. Lost productivity

Our survey data found that hours of lost productivity from a ransomware incident were closely related to the length of time to discovery of the attack. Generally, faster detection meant limiting the spread of the infection and less time spent on remediation. In other words, the further ransomware spreads the longer it takes to eradicate. Unfortunately, almost half (49%) of respondents to our survey reported being unaware of the infection for more than 24 hours.

A third of incidents were reportedly remediated in 1-3 hours, while 17 percent required 3-5 days of effort. We attempted to quantify these lost hours based on hours spent on remediation (easily measurable) and the opportunity costs from diverting resources from IT teams’ “blue sky” responsibilities (tougher to measure).

Factoring in varying costs of IT resources, we determined low/high cost estimates for hours of remediation reported by survey respondents. These ran from $300/$750 for three hours or remediation to $4,000/$10,000 for five workdays of remediation. (A full breakdown is available in the report.)

2. Downtime costs

Regardless of whether an organization decides to pay a ransom, how long does it take to return to normal operations?

In our study, businesses that didn’t pay ransoms had recovered their data quicker than those that didn’t pay. Specifically, 70 percent of companies that didn’t pay a ransom were able to recover their data within a business day, compared to 46 percent that did.

Presumably this has to do with whether a target had readily available backups, and lost time due to back and forth with extortionists or time spent making a payment.

One of the most important factors in determining downtime costs is specifying the value of the data that’s become unavailable. Is it critical to conducting business operations? Or is it nice to have but not essential like marketing or prospecting data?

Determining data’s value helps businesses formulate their recovery time objectives (RTOs). For non-critical data and applications, a 24-hour recovery time may fall within the RTO. For mission-critical data, a 24-hour recovery may exceed the tolerable limit and help drive the cost of downtime higher than the ransom itself.

3. Impact on client operations

Nearly half (46%) of the businesses in our survey reported client operations being adversely affected by a ransomware incident at their own company. This could quickly sever business relationships that take a long time to build and result in the loss of anticipated revenue. But that’s not even be the riskiest aspect of client operations being affected.

The implications of supply chain attacks, especially for MSPs, came into sharper focus last year following the SolarWinds attack. Were a cybercriminal to compromise a trusted supplier to distribute ransomware, rather than for surveillance as in that attack, the costs could be enormous.

MSPs should seriously consider the possibility of becoming the source for such a supply chain attack, especially those with clients in critical industries like energy, public utilities, defense and healthcare.   

4. Brand and reputational damage

Consider the headlines and airtime generated by ransomware attacks against high-profile targets. A Google search of “Garmin ransomware,” for instance, returns more than 1 million results. While your organization may not be a global tech giant, it also likely doesn’t have the staying power of one.

In our study, 38 percent of businesses admitted their brand was harmed by a run-in with ransomware. Beyond lost customers, publicity issues could force businesses to enlist the services of expensive PR or communications firms to repair the damage.

Businesses with the resources to do so should consider themselves lucky, because the alternative is worse. Silence or an uncoordinated response to a ransomware attack – especially one that affects customers – can come of as unserious, callous or ineffective.

Reputational damage in an age of heightened sensitivity to cybersecurity incidents can have significant consequences. Our data shows that 61 percent of consumers switched some or all their business to a competing brand in the last year, and 77 percent admit they retract their loyalty now quicker than they once did.

The list goes on…

By no means is this an exhaustive list of the hidden costs of ransomware. They extend to fines for breaches of compliance regulation, the rising costs of cybersecurity insurance and a host of other unforeseen consequences.

For the complete findings from our survey and our recommendations for not encountering these hidden costs, download the full report.

Download the eBook

The post 4 ways ransomware can cost your business (in addition to extortion) appeared first on Webroot Blog.

By

Podcast: How to build a cyber resilient business

Cyber resilience refers to a business’s ability to mitigate damage to its systems, processes and even its reputation. It’s based on the principle that, in the real (and really connected) world, adverse events occur. This could be in the form of a user enabling a breach by providing sensitive information during a phishing attack, through a new threat known as a “zero day” being weaponized against a business, or an event of any complexity in between.

When it comes to building a cyber resilient business, technology is an important piece. But it’s not the only one. A well-rounded security strategy is also essential. People and processes are key ingredients when it comes to that.

Audit checklists are a great place to start when ensuring your business is taking a holistic approach to data security, and so is this revealing conversation with Channel E2E and MSP Alert editor Joe Panettieri and a product marketing expert at OpenText.

The two discuss how there’s no silver bullet to all the potential threats to your data security, but how adapting the right mindset can help organizations begin to think about security differently. Our experts cover the “train, block, protect, backup and recover” model and what solutions for each can look like as a part of a real-life security stack.

The two touch on the importance of user security training, variables introduced by widespread remote workforces and how backup can undermine ransomware actors. Whether you’re designing a cybersecurity framework for your own business or putting one in place for clients, you won’t want to miss this conversation.

The post Podcast: How to build a cyber resilient business appeared first on Webroot Blog.

By

Podcast: Can we fix IoT security?

For many U.S. workers the switch to remote work is a permanent one. That means more high-stakes work is being conducted on self-configured home networks. For others, home networks are simply hosting more devices as smart doorbells, thermostats and refrigerators now connect to the internet.

Security experts warn that while the internet of things (IoT) isn’t inherently a bad thing, it does present concerns that must be considered. Many devices come pre-configured with inherently poor security. They often have weak or non-existent passwords set as the default.

As our guest and host Joe Panettieri discuss, these are issues that would be addressed on corporate networks by a professional IT administrator. The conversation covers the issues of IoT and home network security both from the perspective of the average family household and what the age of remote work means for employees working on their own networks.

Security intelligence director Grayson Milbourne brings a unique perspective to the podcast. Having held senior roles in both threat intelligence and product management, Milbourne is acutely aware of what the threats security products come up against. He knows both the cyber threat landscape and the consumer internet security market, so he’s able to provide insightful advice for how tech-loving homeowners can keep personal networks powerful and protected. 

Milbourne suggests problems of IoT and home network security could be addressed with a cybersecurity version of ENERGY STAR ratings. A program could formalize current IoT security best practices and incorporate them into a standard consumers recognize.  

During this informative podcast, Panettieri and Milbourne discuss that idea and more cybersecurity topics related to IoT devices. They cover:

  • The difference between device security and the security of the app used to control it
  • How to leverage user reviews while researching IoT devices and what security concerns to check on before buying
  • Privacy and data collection issues, including why one of the most common IoT devices may be among the most intrusive
  • Configuring IoT devices to prevent them from joining rogue IoT zombie networks

Whether you’re an IT administrator trying to secure remote workers or just own a smart TV, there’s something in this conversation for you. Be sure to give it a listen.

The post Podcast: Can we fix IoT security? appeared first on Webroot Blog.