Prevention is important in making sure your company has critical steps in place to avoid a ransomware attack. But is your organization taking a reactionary approach rather than focusing on prevention?

Ransomware attacks are emerging as a major threat across industries. Many applications today are designed as cloud-first platforms, which are vulnerable to attack. Often organizations focus on recovery if such an attack were to occur, but planning to ensure data isn’t breached to begin with is critical.

It’s crucial to develop a strategy for your company that has safeguards in place to help prevent ransomware attacks. Critics say it’s impossible to prevent against every attack, as the ways in which the attackers execute their methods continually change. Those with this mindset are more focused on steps they can take to keep data available in the event of an attack. But this should be covered in your business continuity and disaster recovery strategies, and is reactive rather than proactive. It won’t stop an attack from happening.

If you’ve got applications running in the cloud, you probably already know that cybercriminals are targeting hybrid and multi-cloud environments. There is a large volume of sensitive data residing in the cloud. This means the underlying databases are available for query by disparate systems, mostly because they’re connected to the Internet.

What can you do to tighten up security and build a better prevention and recovery strategy?

·       Be independent of the cloud, closing the door to ransomware attacks.

·       Look more at applications rather than infrastructure. Include recovery and backup efforts at the application level.

·       Be efficient in your backup. The cloud offers cost savings, but be careful that backed up data isn’t too redundant.

·       Be flexible in your recovery efforts. Be willing and able to use different clusters and data centers.

At ACR Solutions, we strive to always work on behalf of our clients. With more than 25 years of experience in the communications industry, we’re aware of all the threats that can compromise an organization. Contact us today to talk about your needs and how we can fill them.