TORONTO (November 18, 2020) – Asigra Inc., a leader in backup and recovery software that delivers comprehensive backup repository cyber protection, today forecast five ransomware challenges expected to impact businesses in 2021, driven in part by an escalation of increasingly sophisticated ransomware attacks globally. Tasked with ensuring operational continuity, Asigra is responding to these challenges and providing guidance on maintaining productive business operations.
According to the US Government’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), “The organization has observed continuing ransomware attacks across the country and around the world. Malicious actors have adjusted their ransomware tactics over time to include pressuring victims for payment by threatening to release stolen data if they refuse to pay. Malicious actors increasingly use tactics such as deleting system backups, which make restoration and recovery more difficult or infeasible for impacted organizations.”
Organizations today have a false sense of security that their backup will be there for them when a ransomware attack occurs. Sadly, a large number of these attacks now target backup data, preventing business recoveries after such attacks. With pandemic-influenced IT trends evolving and a shift in IT solutions and services underway, Asigra has identified the following challenges expected in 2021 and guidelines for operating successfully going forward:
1. Ransomware Attacks on Kubernetes Containers
The deployment of Kubernetes-based containers is growing rapidly as it allows software to run consistently between computing environments, making it highly portable, productive and ideal for digital transformation. Along with these advantages comes the generation of massive data volumes, making these new environments prime targets for new ransomware variants. Mitigating these attacks will require an industry-wide approach to ensuring the viability of these environments before, during and after such attacks.
2. Cyber-targeting of SaaS-Based Applications
With the increase in distributed enterprise operations and remote work environments, there will be continued adoption of SaaS-based applications. Beyond the flexible use of these applications, they offer cost, time and scalability advantages in many cases. However, they also create a new data source that is vulnerable to ransomware and must be protected.
3. AI-Driven Cyberattacks
Artificial intelligence and the technologies that enable it are becoming more advanced. The resulting new capabilities are allowing criminal organizations to conduct more complex and targeted attacks. To counter these more intelligent attacks, organizational defenses must also evolve.
4. Ransomware Payments to Become Illegal
The US government has expressed intentions to align the payment of cyber ransoms with the support of terrorist organizations and will likely make these payments illegal. It is expected that other nations will enact such laws as well, especially to defend against possible nation-state sponsored actors. Without the ability to retrieve criminally encrypted data or recover properly, ransomware attacks will become business ending events.
5. Managed Security Service Provider Registration with the Government
The US government will move to require MSPs/MSSPs that provide cybersecurity services to register their organizations with the government, adding more regulations as the ransomware trend continues to accelerate.
One method of addressing any of the above challenges is to ensure a viable backup copy is available to restore all data to pre-attack status. This entails a strong defense of the organization’s backup infrastructure, including access to backup software controls. Recent ransomware variants are conducting immutability subversion attacks which are possible because ‘step-up’ or Deep MFA (multi-factor authentication) has not been applied to backup software. Asigra Deep MFA requires credentials for any critical function that could compromise a recovery – providing protection to secure policy settings and controls.
“Organizations need to ready themselves to properly and quickly respond to ransomware attacks regardless of what has been attacked. One way to do this is to make backup data very difficult to hack,” said David Farajun, Chief Executive Officer, Asigra, Inc. “Regardless of the imposing number of routes that ransomware will take in 2021, having a well-planned response plan to get your systems back up and running in the least amount of time will be critical to ensuring business viability.”
For a demonstration of this enhanced data protection suite, please contact umair.sattar@asigra.com or visit https://www.asigra.com/contact-us to schedule.
Additional Resources
- Hear what service providers have to say about working with Asigra: https://www.asigra.com/partnership.
- Follow Asigra on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/asigra
- View the enhanced features of the Asigra Hybrid Cloud Partner Program at: https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/cloud/300101651/2018-partner-program-guide-5-star-cloud-vendors-part-1.htm/pgno/0/7
About Asigra
Trusted since 1986, Asigra technology is proudly developed in and supported from North America, providing organizations around the world the ability to quickly recover their data from anywhere through a global network of IT service providers. As the industry’s most comprehensive data protection platform for servers, virtual machines, endpoint devices, databases and applications, SaaS and IaaS based applications, Asigra lowers the total cost of ownership, reduces recovery time objectives, and eliminates silos of backup data by providing a single consolidated repository with 100% recovery assurance and anti-ransomware defense. The company has been recognized as a three-time Product of the Year Gold winner by TechTarget for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software and positioned well in the market by analysts. More information on Asigra can be found at www.asigra.com.
