{"id":2561,"date":"2018-04-11T09:55:31","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T13:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/backup-disaster-recovery\/?p=2561"},"modified":"2018-04-11T11:05:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T15:05:00","slug":"interview-asigras-eran-farajun-on-ransomware-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/backup-disaster-recovery\/interview-asigras-eran-farajun-on-ransomware-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Asigra’s Eran Farajun on Ransomware Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"InterviewEran Farajun is Executive Vice President of Asigra.<\/a> Asigra is a company that offers backup and recovery, as well as data protection solutions. The nature of ransomware attacks is changing, and to stay afloat, organizations must cultivate the skills to properly defend themselves. With more than 20 years of experience in cloud-based data protection, Farajun provided insight on ransomware defense.<\/p>\n

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In regards to the incident in Atlanta,<\/a> Daphne Rackley, the Deputy Chief Information Officer stated that the city had a \u201ccloud strategy\u201d in place, but this clearly wasn\u2019t enough. What could the city of Atlanta have done differently to defend themselves from this attack?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The best and most often-used defense is to ensure there is a reliable and timely backup available to recover from. This, however, is becoming increasingly difficult as many new ransomware strains target backup data. Because this is a relatively new and significant threat, organizations must take extra steps to ensure backup data is clean before conducting a recovery.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the backup platform used, there are a number of backup strategies that can be employed to ensure a clean restore. One approach requires that at least three current copies of the company\u2019s mission-critical data are created. These backup sets are typically stored on multiple media formats, such as secondary disk storage or the cloud with at least one of the backup data set stored in an offsite location. Once in place, data policies should be enhanced to include more regular test recoveries to determine the effectiveness, quality, and speed of the recovery.<\/p>\n

The cost of implementing a disaster recovery plan seems to deter some organizations from putting a plan in place. What advice would you give to someone with this mindset?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having a disaster recovery plan in place is critical to ensuring a clean recovery of backup data, regardless of the cause \u2013 including malware. Many modern data protection solutions include test recovery capabilities that allow for very cost-effective recovery testing so that organizations can ensure their data will be available should ransomware like SamSam (which was the variant behind the recent Atlanta attack) impact your business.<\/p>\n

Preparing for a ransomware attack is daunting; the stakes are high and an attack can occur at any time. Are there any simple or basic recovery strategies that organizations can use as preventative measures?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To avoid Ransomware or other malware variants entering your network(s) in the first place, [Beazley’s 2018 Breach Briefing]<\/a> revealed a number of actions that organizations should take immediately to protect their IT systems against attacks, including:<\/p>\n