How to stop ransomware

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How to stop Ransomware

Ransomware is a big deal. As attacks become more and more prevalent, most companies think of ransomware as a “when” scenario, not an “if.” And paying ransom isn’t the only threat. The cost of remediating the situation and loss of downtime can be devastating:

  • $20 billion: total estimated damages from ransomware in 2021
  • $1.8 million: average cost of recovering from a ransomware attack
  • 35%: percentage of victims who pay the ransom and do not recover their data

It makes sense that you’re wondering how to stop ransomware. Luckily, you’re not facing this threat alone. Our multilayered strategy to combatting ransomware prevents infection, immediately detects potential threats, and helps you quickly recover through a clean copy of your data. With NetApp® ransomware solutions in the mix, your IT becomes ransomware’s worst nightmare.

Cyber resilience: The best way to beat ransomware

Ransomware preys on vulnerabilities. And as IT environments expand into the cloud and become more complex, so do potential openings in your defenses. Copying data to a secondary location or securing the perimeter and endpoints are both great steps to take—but they’re no longer complete data protection or data security strategies.

Instead, successful ransomware fighters deploy a more data-centric approach: cyber resilience. Cyber resilience starts with the data itself, combining data protection and data security across your entire hybrid cloud. Our built-in solutions keep your data available and recoverable while detecting and thwarting threats before they can do harm.

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Zero Trust: secure data from the inside out

The old model: Trust but verify. The new model: Verify and never trust.

As ransomware attacks get more sophisticated, more organizations are shifting focus to how malicious actors gain access to their data. And, spoiler alert: Perimeter protection is no longer enough.

That’s where a Zero Trust architecture comes in. This approach secures data from the inside out, rather than outside in. With Zero Trust, you’ll establish microperimeters while setting appropriate controls for different roles, data, services, applications, and assets.

A Zero Trust architecture should be foundational to your cyber resilience strategy, enabling greater protection and security, and preventing hackers from accessing your data no matter how they sneak into your IT.

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How to stop ransomware, step 1: Protect

The best strategy for stopping ransomware is to prevent hackers from getting anywhere near your data. Protecting your data minimizes data losses, downtime, and stress.

When data protection is foundational to data management, you don’t have to divert resources and slow the hum of performance. NetApp ransomware solutions create immutable and indelible copies of your data that can be efficiently and securely replicated to secondary storage or object storage to create a logical air gap.

How to stop ransomware, step 2: Detect

There’s no way to stop critical threats from popping up—but with the right data security strategy, you can detect and head off danger before it wreaks havoc.

NetApp ransomware solutions monitor file access patterns for suspicious activity, provide alerts for unusual storage indicators, and identify efficiency loss that indicates possible infections. You can also block files that have known malicious extensions, provide audit logging, and integrate with leading virus protection software for complete peace of mind.

How to stop ransomware, step 3: Recover

When disaster does strike, you need to bounce back quickly, restoring data, workloads, and applications as efficiently as possible.

NetApp ransomware solutions cut backup and disaster recovery times to minutes or seconds, practically eliminating downtime. This approach includes secondary on-premises or cloud-based copies. Plus, block-level protection reduces the amount of data being transferred between devices, so you can dramatically reduce replication and recovery times.

You need protection at every access point, with a tamper-proof way to protect the data and to recover in case it’s compromised. Our features—such as read-only NetApp Snapshot™ copies, indelible NetApp SnapLock® file locking, efficient and secure NetApp SnapMirror® data replication, and malicious file screening with NetApp FPolicy—create highly effective preventive measures to keep your data safe during an attack.

With NetApp ONTAP® data management software, you have detection capabilities built into your cyber resilience strategy. Here are a few examples:

  • ONTAP uses machine learning to detect anomalies in the file system, such as data entropy, indicating possible malware attacks.
  • ONTAP monitors storage behavior metrics, such as Snapshot reserve changes or changes in efficiency, to identify possible encryption of data.
  • NetApp Cloud Insights detects anomalies in user behavior, and combined with ONTAP intelligence, identifies bad actors and automatically takes action to remediate the threat.

The SnapLock technology in ONTAP prevents your Snapshot copies from being deleted, so you always have an untouched backup to restore from. Plus, the multi-admin verification feature requires more than one administrator account to perform critical functions (like the deletion of Snapshot copies). And NetApp ransomware solutions enable you to restore petabytes of data in minutes, avoiding downtime and costly ransom payments.

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