Building a resilient cloud infrastructure
It happened. You received the dreaded popup on your computer screen. “Your files have been encrypted.” Your company has been infected with ransomware. All your files are locked, and a hacker is demanding payment in Bitcoin that is due in 72 hours, or all your data will be wiped out.
This is a very real scenario, that has unfortunately affected many large prominent businesses around the world, governments, hospitals, and educational institutions. The scale of these attacks is genuinely concerning because if the big companies, who have abundant budgets and extensive cybersecurity resources, are getting hit, what chance does the average business owner have? Besides the devastating results to a business, ransomware is very costly. According to an article by Tech Transformers, a single incident of ransomware “can cost a company more than $713,000 on average, due to the costs of paying the ransom and related losses, such as value of lost data, the expense of improving infrastructure and repairing brand image.”
I recently had the pleasure of attending an event by Veritas Technologies, called Conquer Every Cloud. At the session titled, “Completing RPO Spectrum with Continuous Data Protection”, product manager Paul Mayer presented on the company’s Resiliency Platform — Continuous Data Protection, which provides backup for a company’s VMware environment.
I spoke with Paul after the event regarding how Veritas’s Resiliency Platform can protect businesses from the abovementioned ransomware attack. The challenge we discussed was, for example, a financial services company that requires near real-time backup protection, as transactions performed even 15 minutes ago might already be outdated. The nice thing about Veritas’s Resiliency Platform is that it provides that level of granularity for continuous data protection, with recovery points of less than 2 minutes apart. The solution works by monitoring the ESXi servers’ data stream, similar to a port mirror on IP networks, and replicating it at the I/O level. This process uses up very little processor resources on ESXi and gives you the ability to save those recovery points at such a granular level. If the dreaded ransomware message ever shows up, just rewind the backup to the nearest real-time recovery point and let the hacker choke on his encrypted data.
In addition to backup/restore, Continuous Data Protection is a great tool for conducting postmortem forensic investigations. Once a hack has occurred, it is a great way to restore the backup to a controlled environment and investigate it at the exact moment it occurred.
Another thing that I learned at the Conquer Every Cloud event is that Veritas has a game-changing solution for businesses that are serious about building a resilient cloud infrastructure: the NetBackup API, which gives you programmatic access to your entire NetBackup solution.
Imagine the following scenario: You are a managed service provider that offers a comprehensive suite of IT services to your customers. One common challenge you might run into is that the different solutions your system admins use have different interfaces. There might be one system that is used for preventative maintenance, one for patching, one for service desk, and so on. Besides being tedious and inefficient, because of the time an admin has to spend switching from one interface to another, as well as having to spend time learning each platform when new members are added to the team, there is an additional challenge. There is no easy way to create uniform granular permission rules for admins based on their job description, as each interface has its own set of permissions and capabilities.
To solve this problem, you decided to build your own proprietary IT services administrative console, which includes access to all your company’s services. As part of this endeavor, you are able to leverage the NetBackup API to add Data Protection services to your company’s application, giving you a single “One Tool” interface with role-based permissions for your entire administrative staff.
In conclusion, continuous data protection is an integral part of resilient cloud infrastructure, as well as a potent weapon of defense against debilitating ransomware attacks. Besides saving you from the hassle and cost of lost business due to downtime, having the right data protection solution will save you the exorbitant cost of paying the ransomware hacker, the loss of your data, and most importantly, repairing your relationship with your customers.
About the Author
Avrohom Gottheil is the founder of #AskTheCEO Media, where he helps global brands get heard over the noise on social media, by presenting their corporate message using language people understand.
Avrohom presents his clients as Thought Leaders, which challenges his audience to reimagine their own mission and vision, delivering actionable insights, and leaving them passionate, motivated, and with the necessary tools to take immediate action.
Avrohom comes from a 20+ year career in IT and Telecom, where he helped businesses around the world install and maintain their communication systems and contact centers. He is a Top-ranked global expert in IoT, AI, Cloud, and Cybersecurity, followed worldwide on Twitter, and a frequent speaker on leveraging technology to accelerate revenue growth.
Listen to him share the latest technology trends, tools, and best practices for IoT, AI, Cloud, Cybersecurity, and emerging technologies on the #AskTheCEO podcast — voted as the #1 Channel Friendly Podcast in 2019 by Forrester, and #2 Podcast from Thinkers360 Thought Leaders in 2020.
Contact Avrohom:
Facebook: AvrohomGottheil
Twitter: @avrohomg
Instagram: @avrohomg
