Every year, World Backup Day on March 31st serves as a reminder of the importance of having a current and easily accessible copy of all important company data to protect against data manipulation.
Reliable backups enable faster recovery from damage, interruption or data loss; and especially if files have been encrypted or deleted by a ransomware attack. However, these well-known backup scenarios remain rare. Immutable backups can also protect against the more underestimated threats of data manipulation or malicious insiders. Unforeseeable activities that can significantly damage the trust and reputation of a brand if not addressed.
Employees with extensive access rights
Attacks on data integrity due to manipulative deletion and falsification are not new, but in the age of generative AI they are becoming increasingly sophisticated and therefore more difficult to detect. The perpetrators can come from outside: external incidents are conceivable that originate from attackers who successfully penetrate the IT system of a stock exchange in order to manipulate share prices and thus trigger panic selling and financial chaos.
Very often, however, it is internal, dissatisfied employees with extensive access rights who attempt to manipulate records within their current or former company, change passwords, shut down servers, delete files or engage in cyber espionage. In addition to protective mechanisms that detect and prevent any attempt at data manipulation within the network, there is also a need for robust and accurate truth-finding (Version of Truth/VoT) with which the original data can be restored and the facts can be corrected.
Protection against data manipulation
The first layer of protection should be a security solution that includes strong access controls, data encryption, secure communication protocols, and AI-driven measures to detect and respond to anomalies that could indicate an attempted attack. The combined effect should both prevent external attackers from accessing the network and modify or delete data, and block internal malicious actions by authorized users.
A second, equally important layer of protection is immutable backups. As the term suggests, immutable data cannot be changed or deleted. If an attacker succeeds in manipulating company communications, documents and other things, backup files remain unaffected and can be used to restore the data and provide unequivocal proof of fake content.
Advantages of immutable backups
Immutable backups can help an organization recover from an incident in which data is encrypted, deleted, corrupted, tampered with, or lost.
- 1. Additional line of defense against attackers. Even with security measures in place, attackers can find ways to bypass security controls. Immutable backups provide additional protection by ensuring that even if the primary data is tampered with, the backup remains intact.
- 2. Protection against insiders with bad intentions. Nobody likes to think about insider threats. After all, they are your own colleagues. However, our own recent research shows that malicious insiders were responsible for around a third (39 percent) of data breaches last year. Immutable backups help protect against insider attacks by preventing authorized users from modifying or deleting data.
- 3. Reduce the impact of ransomware. Immutable backups can protect against ransomware attacks by ensuring a clean, unaltered copy of data is available for recovery.
- 4. Protection against accidental data corruption. Data can become corrupted due to hardware failure, software failure, or human error. Immutable backups protect against these cases by providing a time-accurate copy of data that cannot be altered or corrupted, enabling reliable data recovery.
- 5. Essential for compliance and data protection regulations. Some industries and regulatory requirements require companies to create immutable backups for data retention and regulatory compliance. Immutable backups ensure data integrity and authenticity.
By combining security measures with immutable backups, organizations can implement a robust data protection strategy that protects against both large, widespread cyber threats like ransomware and underestimated, unforeseen threats that can cause just as much damage. With immutable backups, companies are prepared for all eventualities.
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Via Barracuda Networks Striving to make the world a safer place, Barracuda believes that every business should have access to cloud-enabled, enterprise-wide security solutions that are easy to purchase, implement and use. Barracuda protects email, networks, data and applications with innovative solutions that grow and adapt as the customer journey progresses. More than 150.000 companies worldwide trust Barracuda to help them focus on growing their business. For more information, visit www.barracuda.com.
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