Protecting Data Against Ransomware Attacks

One of the most prolific threats to society today is cyberterrorism, which has been exacerbated by the change in the way we work.

Over the past year, there has been an explosion in the use of cloud storage driven by the shift to remote and hybrid working as a result of the pandemic. As the world moves into the recovery phase, data security is now rising to the top of the agenda.

The shift to a cloud-first strategy and subsequent haste in implementation, coupled with the exponential growth in ransomware attacks, many businesses have inadvertently created opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit.

Victims of a ransomware attack are at risk of losing their data but may also experience significant financial loss due to paying the ransom, lost productivity, IT costs, legal fees, network modifications, and/or the purchase of credit monitoring services for employees/customers.

"Ransomware"

Ransomware is malware that employs encryption to hold a victim’s data at ransom. A user or organisation’s critical data is encrypted so that they cannot access files, databases or applications. A ransom is then demanded to provide access by way of a decryption key. Ransomware is often designed to spread across a network and target database and file servers and can thus quickly paralyse an entire organisation. It is a growing threat, generating billions of dollars in payments to cybercriminals and inflicting severe damage and expenses for businesses and governmental organisations.

Strengthen your cyber attack resilience

Cybercriminals are now aggressively targeting backup data, including shadow copies. There’s one sure way to protect critical data in the event of a cyber attack – by regularly backing up your data to hardware encrypted data storage devices, which are stored offline

By backing-up your data to a device that is stored away from the network, with a second copy kept offsite, you have also created an effective disaster recovery plan. In the event of a ransomware attack, you can simply restore data from your most recent backup, thus reducing downtime, disruption, stress, adverse publicity and the need to pay a hefty fine.

To further strengthen resilience, implement an authorised removable media policy to control the use of USB devices in your organisation. iStorage USB encrypted devices are configured with a unique VID/PID allowing whitelisting to meet internal corporate requirements.

Ransom attacks by industry

Ransomware myth

The myth is that if you pay the fine, you will get the data back. However, in reality it is never guaranteed that you will retrieve all of your data in exchange for paying a ransom.

Therefore, if you include a process to backup and store your data offline on encrypted data storage devices as part of your IT security infrastructure, you can restore the data and resume business operations.

Trusted data storage solutions with advanced security features

About iStorage

iStorage has been developing innovative encrypted USB Flash, HDD and SSD devices since 2009. Using military specified encryption levels, we ensure that all users of iStorage products are fully protected against data leakage, helping our customers comply to data protection and confidentiality laws.

Our solutions are trusted by public and private organisations across government, banking & finance, legal, healthcare, military and defence sectors, and many more, in over 50 countries.

Compliance & Certification

iStorage is the world’s first and only vendor to attain the following government certifications on the diskAshur PRO² and diskAshur DT² range of PIN authenticated, hardware encrypted, HDDs and SSDs: FIPS 140-2 Level 2/3, NCSC CPA, NLNCSA BSPA and NATO Restricted level.

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Ransomware Protection

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