It’s an old cliché in cybersecurity, but it’s now true that it’s gotten to the point where it’s not a matter of if, but when a company will experience a ransomware attack.
The numbers point to the seriousness of the situation: In 2023, ransomware payments exceeded a record $1 billion, according to Chainalysis. Keep in mind that number reflects just payments, it does not represent the total costs of a ransomware attack.
Think about the ransomware attack on MGM Resorts that reportedly cost the company $100 million.
How many more cyber incidents like that are in front of us in 2024?
In today's cyberthreat landscape, companies need a response plan, and to remain effective, organizations need to include both proactive and reactive aspects of the plan. Storage-based data protection offers an ideal approach to defend against cyber-attacks because it delivers true immutability with minimal visibility on the attack surface.
Over the past year, Hitachi Vantara and VM2020 have partnered to empower solution providers to offer their customers one of the world fastest recovery offerings following a ransomware attack.
Ransomware’s Long Reach
Simon Dorn, a subject matter expert for data protection and data management at Hitachi Vantara, underscored in a video presentation at a recent trade show that ransomware has become a top concern for IT and security decision-makers.
Dorn pointed out that recent Hitachi Vantara data showed that 53% of ransomware victims surveyed said the attack targeted sensitive infrastructure configuration data, which show a growing trend of threat actors attacking network infrastructure.
Other important data points include ransomware attacks targeting the following;
- 40% - Storage systems
- 39% - Cloud data
- 37% - Network and connectivity data
- 36% - Critical IT infrastructure
- 36% - Data protection infrastructure
A New Approach: Thin Digital Twins
Dorn explained that Hitachi Vantara and VM2020 have integrated unique capabilities of Hitachi Ops Center Protector with VM2020 CyberVR to offer IT customers isolated “thin digital twin” environments.
Within this environment, customers can create an isolated server or application group to proactively test protection copies for recoverability, as well as run IO-intensive ransomware/malware scans with no impact to production applications. IT staffs can also use the “thin digital twins” for patch and change management, full-force penetration testing, security control validation, remediation testing, and ransomware recovery.
Dorn explained that the “thin” element comes from safely leveraging existing Hitachi Vantara VSP storage snapshots for near-instant provisioning, all with a minimal storage footprint.
“Customers can recover from immutable snapshots to virtual-air-gap on production-equivalent storage,” said Dorn. “The recovered VMs are re-protected before re-connecting users.”
By integrating Hitachi Vantara Ops Center Protector with VM2020 CyberVR thin digital twin technology, companies can now recover and re-connect from a ransomware attack inside of hours versus weeks.
Think of it as the world’s fastest ransomware recovery.