Whether you’re protecting critical data from a ransomware attack or safeguarding it against malicious actors, security plays a prominent role in achieving cyber resiliency. Of course, the best way to avoid a disaster is to prevent it from happening in the first place. But what does this look like in real-world terms? An in-depth defense strategy must be taken, coupled with a methodology that’s built around secure backups, advanced monitoring and recovery at-scale.
It’s no secret that threat actors commonly target an organizations’ backups. If ransomware hits and your backups are encrypted, you may contemplate paying the ransom if you don’t have a strong strategy in place. Unfortunately, even if you pay, there is no guarantee that you’ll get your data back. What if a malicious employee or someone else has gained access to a privileged network user account? If they delete your backups, what happens then?
Secure Backup and Fast Recovery
Secure backups are a solid and robust foundation for cyber resiliency. However, when disaster strikes, you need a reliable and trusted backup to restore from. With the release of Veeam Backup & Replication v12, numerous enhancements have allowed enterprises to better protect one of their most valuable assets: Their data.
With multifactor authentication in V12, businesses can add a layer of validation to their data protection strategy. With this feature, anyone who logs into the Veeam Backup & Replication console has to enter a one-time passcode. This means that, should a threat actor obtain a privileged user’s username and password, they still cannot log into the console without having this additional passcode. As part of the security chain, multi-factor authentication (MFA) should also be enabled on the guest OS the console is running on, which prevents the attacker from getting close to your backup management plane.
Stealing credentials, whether through phishing attempts, keyloggers or brute force attacks is another common attack vector. A common technique for protecting against threats is using accounts that are dedicated to services. These can be used for specific tasks, have longer and more complex passwords and limited permissions. Unfortunately, these acocunts can increase management overhead, particularly when it comes time to rotate passwords. With group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs), backup administrators can use Active Directory accounts to interact with guest OSes and applications. These accounts require long and complex passwords and automatically rotate them every 30 days. This allows for increased security and increased efficiency.
Lastly, I would be remised if I didn’t mention immutable backups. It’s no secret that businesses have many reasons to love object storage, and immutability is pretty close to number one. With V12, bringing immutability into your data center has never been easier, whether that’s through object storage, Linux Hardened repositories, a cloud partner or Veeam Certified Service Provider.
Proactive Monitoring and Analytics
Implementing access controls just only one step in the journey – proactive monitoring and analytics are essential! Next, you need to make sure that the defenses you’ve put in place are working the way you intend them to while monitoring for vulnerabilities you may have missed.
With Veeam ONE v12, you’ll always be able to see your security posture at-a -lance. Reports like the immutable workloads report can quickly identify protection gaps for workloads that do not have any restore points that sit on immutable storage. Whether it’s an NAS share, virtual machine (VM) or a Veeam Agent backup, if you have any restore points that are not immutable, you are at risk.
Similarly, the backup infrastructure audit and infrastructure change audit reports are two key reports that all IT departments should use. By quickly and accurately identifying changed components, administrators can review details to see what changes were made, by whom, and when. Whether intentional or not, changes can cause outages and failed backups. By proactively monitoring these changes, teams can stay ahead of the curve and stop problems before they start.
Veeam ONE is not just limited to your on-premises environment. V12 offers new functionalities, including support for monitoring, alerting, reporting and dashboards for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. For example, suppose you are running AWS, Azure or Google Cloud workloads. In that case, a wealth of enhancements are already available to give you the visibility you need to keep your business running.
Proven Recovery Orchestration
As cyber threats become more sophisticated and lucrative for attackers, recovery is something every organization needs to plan for, no matter the size. According to Veeam’s latest Data Protection Trends Report, 85% of organizations had at least one ransomware attack in 2022. Attacks are rarely limited in scope.All too often, organizations may not realize they’re under attack until it is too late. Situations like this are why each enterprise needs to ensure they are cyber resilient;workloads must get back into production quickly, at scale, and possibly in new locations.
Veeam is a pioneer when it comes to instantly recovering workloads. Still, with today’s large and complex environments, orchestration capabilities and the ability to securely restore your workloads to any location within your hybrid cloud is now a requirement. Features like clean disaster recovery (DR) in Veeam Recovery Orchestrator v6 provide you with the confidence you need when performing restores. The last thing you want to do is to restore a backup that has already been infected – let Orchestrator do the work for you! Clean DR will scan each restore point as part of the recovery process to ensure it is clean. If malicious code is detected, the next most recent restore point will automatically be scanned. Plus, what if you find yourself without on-premises resources to restore to? With pre-built, trusted and tested plans, Orchestrator can restore directly to Azure, giving you the flexibility you need when you need it most!
Security in Every Step
Security is not just a “one-and-done” task – it needs to be implemented, monitored and continually tested. Closing gaps to remove vulnerabilities, detecting threats, and recovering quickly and reliably are all critical. Implementing the right tools with the capabilities to protect, monitor and restore your essential data and workloads has never been more critical. Throughout the stack, security has been built directly into Veeam Data Platform to ensure that customers like you can achieve the cyber resilience that’s needed today.
To hear more about the innovations in our latest platform release, catch a replay of our V12 launch event. If you are ready to take your data protection strategy to the next level, download a fully functional 30-day trial today!