Ransomware Protection

No single solution is guaranteed to prevent a ransomware attack. Backup itself is only a means of protecting your data that’s backed up in our datacentres, it can’t prevent an initial ransomware infection on your network.

It can, however, prevent you from ever needing to pay criminals to get your data back.

Strong, multi-layered security (e.g. firewalls, anti-virus, anti-malware, etc.) is essential to the prevention of a ransomware attack. A strategy is important here, so we recommend reaching out to a dedicated consultant / company who specialises in IT security.

This is important, because similar to a biological virus’s ability to mutate, ransomware is actively ‘mutated’ by cyber criminals to avoid new detection methods and bypass improved defences. Without a consistently monitored strategy, tactics that once worked may suddenly fail.

Most ransomware attacks are triggered by human action, like an employee opening an attachment or clicking a link inside a malicious email. While firewalls and strict email spam policies can block most of these, technology is fallible, so can only take you so far – training employees to recognise suspicious emails will greatly reduce the chances of falling prey to attack.

Criminals will also resort to hacking into networks to plant ransomware, though they know that human fallibility and ignorance is more reliable (and less effort) than actively breaking into a business’s IT systems.

It depends on the sophistication of the ransomware attack – there are many different ‘strains’ and each one varies in its ability to penetrate your network.

• If you suffer a ‘simple’ infection, where a localised machine or small set of systems are affected, you should be able to just restore the files / folders on each one to a previous backup point.
• For the most sophisticated attacks, where the infection successfully locks down your entire network and servers, a full server restore will be required.

If you aren’t confident on how to respond in the event of an attack, please contact our technical support team by phone and we’ll advise you on the right course of action. We’re available 24/7 by phone in emergencies, so don’t hesitate to call.

Our backups can’t be infected because all data held on our servers is immutable, meaning it’s designed to be impossible for external interference to alter the integrity of the backup.

We also protect your data with point-in-time backups and 256bit AES end-to-end encryption; your data is protected by powerful 256bit encryption and only you know the key.

There are several reasons:

1. By paying criminals to have your data decrypted and returned to you only serves to validate their criminality. The more businesses agree to pay up, the more emboldened they are to keep doing it.
2. As soon as you DO pay, you are far more likely to be targeted again – so far as they are concerned, if you’ve paid once, you’re more likely to pay again.
3. These are not legitimate businesses and – clearly – they operate outside the law. That means when you pay up, they aren’t obliged to give your data back. There are plenty of horror stories online to prove it.
4. Even if a ransomware outfit does release your data, the average portion of data they decrypt is around 65%, leaving the remaining 35% untouchable.
5. The decryption process isn’t fool-proof and what you do get back might be damaged or corrupted.