Among the catalogue of cyber resiliency frameworks circulating in the industry, you’ll nearly always find a word on the far right: Recover. The reality is, you can gather up and implement every best practice in the book — from identity and access management to threat detection — and still end up facing a successful ransomware attack. Recovery may be your last line of defense.
On-premises, most organizations now run at least one purpose-built backup tool for their resiliency. However, as more applications and data refactor and migrate to IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, many organizations rely on built-in tools for recovery – leaving them vulnerable.
The Limitations of Snapshots
In the Cloud Protection Trends Report for 2023, 61% of organizations noted that they use native snapshotting within their cloud of choice to back up their data.
Snapshots have many benefits, including:
- Low Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs)
- Low Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs)
- Easy to setup and get started
But true backup goes beyond snapshots. It includes delivering the advanced capabilities most organizations need to stay resilient in the face of an insider threat, cyber security attack or just an accidental deletion – all without burning through your storage and compute budgets.
Backup goes beyond snapshotting to offer:
- Granular recoveries, from full instance to file-level recovery
- Restore flexibility across subscriptions, regions or locations outside the cloud
- Storage efficiencies that tier to low-cost object storage
- Improved security, including role-based access controls and resilient storage
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure offers native backup for Azure virtual machines (VMs), Azure Files, Azure SQL and more. Check out this short demo from the Veeam Team to see it in action:
Last but not least in the backup benefits list: Improved security. The latest version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure introduced a new capability that could be the life saver your organization needs in the event of a cyber threat.
1-Up with Immutable Storage for Azure Blob
Much like the brick blocks in Super Mario, the buckets of Azure Blob hold extra lives! Immutable Storage for Azure Blob enable organizations to store data in a Write Once, Read Many (WORM) state. There are two types of built-in policies:
- Time-based retention policies that address compliance regulations in SEC 17a-4(f), FINRA and more
- Legal hold policies for tamper-proof retention
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure builds on these use cases to add immutable backups. Cybersecurity events, like insider threats and malicious attacks, attempt to tamper with a variety of data types. In the Ransomware Trends Report for 2022, 38% of respondents acknowledged that some of their backup repositories were successfully destroyed – suggesting that adversaries seek out threat vectors well beyond production data stores.
By adding Veeam to your Azure infrastructure, you’ll leverage purpose-built configuration methods to manage policies, retention periods, encryption (including passwords managed by Azure Key Vault) and enable Immutable Storage. In the event of a ransomware attack, you don’t need to pay the ransom or accept the KO! Just restore your tamper-proof backup to production and keep on moving.
To see how easy it is to set up backup repositories with Veeam, check out this short demo from the Veeam Team:
Ready to Level Up With Veeam?
Getting started doesn’t take a ton of experience points! The Veeam Team has made it easy to get started, whether you’re a long-time Veeam user or new to the community.
- Step 1: Ensure you have the keys to the castle. Veeam Universal License (VUL) entitles protection for VMware, Windows, Azure VMs and more.
- Step 2: Deploy fast via the Azure Marketplace
- Step 3: Check out the Veeam Help Center for architecture overviews, configuration instructions and planning tips.
- Step 4: Join us at VeeamON! We’ll be there with the cloud product management team and other cloud solution experts to dismantle the complexities of hybrid and multi-cloud management with the Veeam community. See you in Miami!
