Managed Service Providers take a large load off their small-to-medium-sized business clients, but they also take a lot of the risk as well. When businesses flock to an MSP for help with their IT systems, cyber criminals find a target that can affect multiple companies instead of just one.
Specifically, let’s talk about ransomware. According to the 2023 Data Protection Trends Report, which is the industry’s largest independent research on backup and data protection, 85% of organizations surveyed reported at least one ransomware attack in 2022. That number is well beyond making it the majority. In fact, it should shift thinking from “if ransomware will strike” to “when ransomware will strike.”
Pillars of MSP Ransomware Protection
You’re an MSP, you have the responsibility of delivering value, service and ROI. Unfortunately, ransomware seems all but inevitable, threatening the safety and availability of customer data. What do you do?
I would like to offer five key steps for your protection plan, taken from the whitepaper, Achieving Ransomware Resiliency with BaaS and DRaaS:
- Immutability
- 24/7 proactive monitoring and alerting
- Protecting tenant backups from intentional or accidental deletion
- Verifying backups automatically to ensure recovery
- Validating backups are clean before restoring them
With these five concepts as the core of your MSP ransomware protection strategy, you’ll better avoid customer environment downtime and close the gap between SLAs and speed. And without further ado, let’s dive into the first key step.
Immutability
Is change truly the only constant? It doesn’t have to be for safe data. Having immutable backup storage ensures data cannot be deleted, encrypted and/or changed. This goes both ways too. People with admin rights can’t mess with the data and neither can malicious actors. The big plus side here is that clean, current immutable backups can guarantee safe restores.
This is a tool MSPs should be using for their own infrastructures. You can also provide immutability options to meet customers’ needs. For example, this can include short and long-term storage, as well as structured or unstructured data across on-premises and multi-cloud environments.
Veeam and MSPs
Veeam has worked hard to build a trusting relationship with MSPs. This includes current partners, accepting new partners and offering solutions. In fact, Veeam Data Platform provides on-site and off-site immutable backup storage, as well as additional protection against malicious activity or accidental deletion. So, when it comes to the first step to a solid MSP ransomware protection strategy, Veeam already has you covered.
The Other Four Steps
I’ve spent most of this blog talking about the importance of protecting data and how immutability is the first step, but what about the other steps I listed? Though I think seeing the list is a helpful start, I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest reading the related whitepaper. Take some time out of your day to read Achieving Ransomware Resiliency with BaaS and DRaaS and get the full deep dive into all five steps.
You can also join our upcoming webinar to learn about how Veeam helps service providers keep businesses running with Veeam‑powered BaaS & DRaaS.