Why native protection in your primary storage is key to cyber resilience

When it comes to protecting your business against ransomware, chances are your data protection and recovery plan focuses on backup copies. That strategy may have been great several years ago, but times have changed. Cybercriminals are smart. They know your strategy and are now targeting your backup environment. And even if your backup environment stays safe, recovering from backup copies can pose its own challenges.

By including data protection in your primary storage, you can build a more comprehensive cyber resilience strategy that helps you land a knockout blow to cyberattacks.

Why primary storage is key to enabling cyber resilience

Don’t get me wrong: Having a recoverable backup environment is important. But for even stronger cyber resilience, layering on protection in the primary storage environment is important. Here’s why native protection in your primary storage is key to stronger cyber resilience.

Identify attacks faster

Data protection technologies in your primary storage provide the visibility that you need to detect malicious activity in real time. You can see who is accessing your data and prevent them from accessing it if suspicious activity is detected. This visibility also helps you identify areas of potential risk so that you can proactively prevent attacks.

On the flip side, backup environments are retroactive. Anomalies in data are detected after the fact, when it has been copied and backed up to another location. By then, attackers will have had plenty of time to cause significant damage to your production environment.

Cyber resilience relies on your ability to beat your attackers to the punch. And that means putting up your guard and safeguarding your primary storage with real-time detection and protection.

Speed time to recovery

To reduce the impact of a cyberattack, you must be able to recover quickly. But recovering from backups can be time-consuming. It takes time to find the latest good copy of your data. It takes time to carry out the recovery. And to top it off, there’s a high chance that you will experience some data loss, depending on your recovery point. In fact, only 57% of businesses succeed in recovering data by using a backup. 

With native data protection in your primary storage, you can uncover attacks quickly and prevent your data from being compromised in the first place. Data encryption, data immutability, and data indelibility features add extra protection and prevent attackers from taking control of your data.

Start building your primary storage defense

To learn more about cyber resilience and the importance of native protection in your primary storage, read the Combatting Ransomware with Primary Storage Technical Insight Report from Evaluator Group.

And stay tuned for my next blog post to find out why NetApp^® solutions should be part of your cyber resilience conversations.