Ad Image

Data Security Best Practices to Safeguard Data Against Cyber Threats

Druva’s Yogesh Badwe offers insights on data security best practices to safeguard data against cyber threats. This article originally appeared on Solutions Review’s Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community enabling the human conversation on AI.

Ransomware attack TTPs are evolving, and backup data has become a key target. According to Sophos, a staggering 94 percent of organizations have been hit by attacks that specifically target their backup systems. Cybercriminals know that if they can compromise backups – the last line of defense against attacks – businesses are more likely to pay a ransom. As this trend continues, businesses need to be prepared to face even greater risks in 2025 and beyond.

While traditional cybersecurity measures typically concentrate on perimeter defenses, it’s inevitable that some threats will penetrate the perimeter. The impact of ransomware is becoming increasingly costly, with many organizations now realizing that traditional cybersecurity measures focused only on the perimeter are not enough. Backup data needs stronger protections to thwart the evolving attacker TTPs.

To defend against advanced cyber attacks, businesses must adopt a comprehensive and proactive approach to securing their backup data. This approach should focus on three critical pillars, including: implementing a Zero Trust security model, leveraging automation to its fullest potential, and utilizing Generative AI tools to collectively protect backup data from threats, ensuring rapid recovery and business continuity.

Implementing the Zero Trust Model in the Age of Modern Cyber Threats

As ransomware attacks continue to target backup data, traditional perimeter defenses are no longer enough. Zero trust, based on the principle of, “never trust, always verify,” ensures that only authenticated users and devices can access critical data, including backup systems. By continually verifying identify and access permissions, Zero Trust helps prevent unauthorized access that could lead to data encryption or deletion by ransomware.

Key Zero Trust practices include implementing least-privilege access, which limits user access to only the data necessary for their roles, reducing the blast radius of a potential access compromise. Additionally, requiring strong, phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) for any attempt to access critical backup systems adds an important layer of defense to protect against successful credential attacks. It’s also essential to identify and segment backup data, applying secure access policies that are tailored to specific user roles and access methods to further protect sensitive information. By prioritizing these strategies, organizations can bolster their defenses, safeguard critical data, and minimize the impact of evolving threats on their backup systems.

Leveraging Automation to Strengthen Cyber Resilience and Streamline Threat Response 

Automation plays a critical role in strengthening backup security and improving recovery speed and accuracy. By automating key processes, businesses can reduce the impact of ransomware attacks, recover faster, and minimize downtime and data loss. Automating backup procedures ensures data integrity by securing backup data with air-gapped, immutable, and encrypted protections, which prevent ransomware from accessing, encrypting or deleting critical data. Additionally, designated recovery solutions should be used to identify and restore clean versions of files, ensuring the recovery process is swift, accurate, and reduces the risk of reinfection.

By integrating automation into security frameworks, businesses can enhance resilience, minimize downtime, and maintain operational continuity in the face of modern cyber threats. While Zero Trust helps secure access, automation enhances response time and recovery speed, ensuring that data integrity is preserved during an attack.

Harnessing Generative AI for Faster Threat Investigations and Recovery 

Generative AI (GenAI) is revolutionizing the way businesses detect, investigate, and recover from ransomware attacks. By leveraging GenAI, organizations can quickly identify threats and restore backup data with greater speed and accuracy, significantly reducing the impact of these attacks. One of the key advantages of GenAI in backup security is its ability to provide faster threat detection. Continuously monitoring backup environments for anomalies, GenAI can instantly flag potential ransomware risks, allowing security teams to respond more rapidly.

Additionally, GenAI streamlines investigations by analyzing vast amounts of data and presenting clear, actionable security insights. It allows teams to use natural language queries, making threat analysis more intuitive and efficient. When ransomware is detected, GenAI can accelerate recovery by pinpointing clean versions of files, ensuring that only safe data is restored and minimizing downtime. This capability not only speeds up the recovery process but also reduces the risk of reinfection.

By helping businesses transition from a reactive to a proactive security posture, GenAI improves both threat detection and resolution times, which is crucial for mitigating the damage caused by ransomware. Overall, GenAI enhances threat management workflows, reduces operational complexity, and strengthens overall security resilience, providing businesses with a robust defense against modern cyber threats.

Reinforcing the Role of Data Protection in Modern Security Strategies

In today’s cyber threat landscape, protecting backup data is as critical as securing any other part of your IT infrastructure. With ransomware increasingly targeting backup environments, businesses must treat backup data as a high-value asset and implement robust security measures. A comprehensive approach that incorporates Zero Trust, automation, and GenAI can not only protect data but also enable faster recovery, minimizing disruption. As ransomware continues to evolve, the need to safeguard backup data has never been more urgent. By adopting these strategies now, businesses can proactively defend against sophisticated threats and ensure their resilience in the face of future attacks.

Share This

Related Posts