The cyber threat landscape has drastically changed over the past decade leaving city governments vulnerable to their technical debt, and cyberattacks from bad actors, insiders, and nation states. The perfect storm of exponential data growth, IT management complexity, and cyber threats has pushed cyber risk levels to an unacceptable all-time high. Data sprawl and a dependency on legacy applications and infrastructure at every level of state and local government has also created a massively expanded attack surface.
For state and local government IT professionals, staying ahead of these challenges is difficult, but also imperative to protect day-to-day operations and the digital services citizens rely on. In this blog, we’ll dive into:
- Veeam’s comprehensive modern approach to data and application protection
- How it addresses the unique needs of state and local government organizations
- Why cities and towns of every size need to integrate Veeam into their disaster recovery and IT modernization strategies
Government Data is Highly Vulnerable
Data is more than just information stored in a server — it’s the foundation upon which critical governmental functions operate. Over 250 million cyber incidents targeting government entities have impacted U.S. citizens since 2018, at an estimated $40 billion ($40,000,000,000) in projected costs associated with downtime, bad PR, and ransoms paid. These attacks are not only increasing in frequency but are also becoming more sophisticated. A recent report indicated that 72.7% of organizations fell victim to ransomware in 2023, with recovery costs skyrocketing by 50% compared to previous years. This rising level of cyber risk mandates modernization of outdated data protection strategies and tools.
Because governments are high-value targets, risks go beyond just data corruption and loss. Attacks on network and cloud infrastructure, and applications that deliver mission-critical services related to public safety, healthcare, and education, can grind government operations to a halt. Shockingly, 51% of state and local government backups were successfully compromised in recent attacks. In an environment where 43% of data becomes irrecoverable after a ransomware attacks, it’s clear that legacy backup and recovery solutions are no longer enough since a stunning 98 percent of attacks against state and local governments led to data encryption, and 99 percent involved attempts to compromise backups.
Zero Trust Data Resilience
In response to these heightened threats, Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) is designed specifically to minimize risks and ensure uninterrupted government operations. At the heart of this architecture is the principle that no device, user, or service is trusted by default, regardless of whether it exists inside or outside the network perimeter. Veeam’s agnostic solutions protect mixed workloads in a ZTA regardless of the technology or platform type. Veeam plugs that principle into the foundational architecture of every customer solution, employing physical and/or logical separation of environments and least privilege access to minimize the attack surface and blast radius. Veeam’s hardware-agnostic solutions have the following functions to optimize data security.
- Immutable backups: With ransomware on the rise, having an unalterable backup is crucial. Veeam’s solutions ensure that once data is stored, it cannot be changed or deleted, making it impossible for attackers to tamper with.
- Segmented software and storage: This approach reduces the attack surface, ensuring that even if one part of the system is compromised, the rest remains secure.
- Multiple resilience zones: By isolating various parts of the system, Veeam ensures that even in the event of an attack, core government operations remain unaffected.
- Proactive data management: Backup is only part of the data resiliency equation. Ensuring backups are reliable and recoverable is equally important. Veeam takes a holistic approach to data management with a platform that integrates proactive threat assessments, forensic triage, and incident response services. This means you aren’t just waiting for an attack to happen—you’re actively working to prevent it.
Data Resilience: A Unified Solution for All Workloads
Continuity of Operations (COOP) is a critical focus for state and local government IT professionals. Whether it’s maintaining public safety communications, healthcare records, or tax and financial data, ensuring the uninterrupted operation of public services is a top priority. Veeam’s solutions are designed for true data and application resiliency to support of COOP initiatives. Veeam ensures data is always available, recoverable, and secure. Whether you’re managing virtual environments, physical servers, SaaS applications, or cloud-based infrastructures, Veeam offers native APIs that integrate with your existing platforms. This ensures true seamless management and resilience across various environments, which is critical for the hybrid cloud ecosystems common in government IT environments. Veeam suggests following the modern 3-2-1-1-0 rule for resilience: keep three copies of your data; use two different media types; have one copy stored off-site, one copy off-line, air-gapped, or immutable; ensure data recovery is safe and error-free.
Data Recovery: Reduce Downtime to Near Zero
One of the standout features of Veeam’s solution is its industry-leading data recovery capabilities. IT staff know that downtime is not just an inconvenience — it can be catastrophic. Veeam’s approach to recovery ensures that data can be restored faster than traditional solutions.
Take, for example, the City of Sarasota, which for the first time in its history could guarantee business continuity, thanks to Veeam’s data recovery solutions. The city’s IT department can now ensure that critical data is restored swiftly, avoiding any operational disruptions.
Data Portability: Avoiding Vendor Lock-In
One of the primary concerns for IT pros when choosing a backup solution is avoiding vendor lock-in. For example, government agencies using legacy VMs are now subject to massive price hikes due to the lack of competition. With Veeam and Veeam Kasten for Kubernetes, organizations gain complete data portability. Veeam Kasten allows users to move, migrate, and recover data from any platform to any platform, ensuring you aren’t tied to a single vendor’s infrastructure. This flexibility is invaluable for government entities that want to shift data between legacy VMs and containers, on-premises solutions, private clouds, or a mix of public clouds like AWS or Microsoft Azure. The ability to recover from anywhere, to anywhere, not only enhances resilience but also allows for greater scalability and agility in response to evolving needs.
AI-Driven Threat Detection and Data Intelligence
As threats evolve, so must the tools used to detect and mitigate them. Veeam integrates AI-powered threat detection into its platform, giving IT teams real-time alerts, security scoring, and automated diagnostics. This AI-driven approach ensures that potential vulnerabilities are identified and rectified before they can be exploited.
In addition, Veeam enables organizations to leverage their backup data for more than just recovery. Through backup data reuse, organizations can harness stored data for data mining, testing, and development purposes. This turns backup data from a static resource into a dynamic asset, driving further innovation within government IT departments.
End-to-End Ransomware Protection
No discussion of data resilience is complete without addressing ransomware. Veeam offers the most comprehensive end-to-end protection against ransomware attacks. This includes not only immutable backups and Zero Trust Architecture, but also advanced ransomware prevention, threat detection, and incident response services.
Veeam experts are on hand 24/7 to help organizations respond to attacks swiftly. From data recovery to forensic analysis, Veeam’s approach ensures that organizations can restore operations quickly, with minimal data loss.
Veeam’s Success in Government Operations
Over 5000 local government agencies trust Veeam to handle their data resilience needs. For example, the City of Rancho Cucamonga recaptured 40 hours of productivity per month by automating their backup and recovery processes with Veeam. This efficiency enabled the city to focus on critical modernization projects, such as hardware refreshes and strategic IT roadmaps.
Another example is the City of New Orleans, which chose Veeam for its data portability and comprehensive cloud management capabilities. The city now has the peace of mind that its data is protected, whether stored on-premises or in the cloud.
Veeam: The Backbone of Data Resilience
For IT pros in government sectors, the stakes have never been higher. The threats are growing, the complexity of managing data across various environments is increasing, and the cost of recovery is rising. Veeam provides the comprehensive solution needed to address these challenges head-on. From Zero Trust Architecture to AI-driven threat detection and instant recovery capabilities, Veeam ensures that government agencies can continue to serve their citizens without fear of disruption.
By adopting Veeam, organizations can ensure that they’re not just managing data—they’re protecting the backbone of government operations in a way that’s secure, scalable, and future-proof.
In a world where data resilience is no longer a luxury but a necessity, Veeam stands out as a trusted partner for public sector entities seeking to safeguard critical government functions from the ever-present threat of cyberattacks.
