DISRUPTIVE TECH to optimise environments and can cause more problems for things like backup and recovery . fact at this point , that businesses can easily be locked into using specific cloud providers .
Do not feed the criminals
The other , perhaps more infamous , issue that can affect data portability is cloud lock-in . It is a well-known
Edwin Weijdema , Field CTO and Lead Cybersecurity
Technologist , Veeam
Cyber insurance has become a divisive topic recently , and this mostly comes down to the million-dollar question with ransomware : to pay or not to pay ? While many refute the idea that insured companies are more likely to pay ransoms , a 2023 report of victims found that 77 % of ransoms were paid by insurance . However , many insurers are trying to put a stop to this .
Paying ransoms is not a good idea and is not what insurance should be used for . It is not just a question of ethics and fuelling more crime , but the fact that paying the ransom does not at once solve the problem – and often creates new ones . Firstly , ransomware gangs will mark companies who pay so they can return for seconds or share this information with other gangs .
One study found that 80 % of companies that paid a ransom were hit a second time . But even before you get to this point , recovering via ransom payment is rarely plain sailing . It takes a long time to recover with the decryption keys provided by the attackers , this is often intentional as some groups will charge per key to speed up the process . This is if decryption even works , one in five businesses pay ransoms and are left unable to recover their data .
Companies in need of cyber insurance are increasingly needed to meet minimum security and ransomware resilience standards . This can include using encrypted and immutable backups and implementing best practice data protection principles like least privilege , only giving access to those who need it or four-eyes , requiring significant changes or requests to be approved by two people .
Some policies also require businesses to have robust plans to ensure system availability , including well-defined disaster recovery processes to prevent downtime from a ransomware attack . After all , the longer an environment is out of action , the higher the cost of downtime and , with it , the insurance claim cost .
Enterprises should have all of these things in place anyway . If there is only insurance alongside flimsy data protection and recovery processes , insurance payouts will just paper over the cracks .
The introduction of minimum standards is good news for businesses . Not only will it push the cost of premiums down eventually , but the security principles they dictate will be more valuable to businesses than the insurance was to begin with .
Cyber insurance is not a silver bullet but can be a beneficial element of a wider cyber resilience strategy . Both are nice to have , but if you could only have one , resilience is the pick every time . Fortunately , insurers agree , as unprotected businesses are becoming too unprofitable to cover .
This can be due to dependencies like integrations with services and APIs that cannot be replicated elsewhere , the sheer data gravity it might have in a single cloud , and a simple knowledge gap meaning teams know how to use their current cloud , but lack the ability to collaborate with a different provider .
Of course , this will only affect moving workloads out of the cloud , so it is still possible to build for better portability to give you better storage options and promote better data hygiene .
Security
It is crucial when building and capitalising on data portability that security is not left behind . Of course , improving security can , and should be a motive for moving workloads in the first place but if you are migrating workloads to optimise costs this must be balanced against security considerations .
Security needs to be part of the data hygiene process , so teams need to ask , What do we have ? What things do we not need ? and What are the critical workloads we absolutely cannot afford to lose ? Beyond this , continue to patch servers and when moving data to colder storage etc remove internet access when it is not needed .
Having backup and recovery processes in place is also key when moving workloads . To come full circle , having easy data portability is also important for disaster recovery .
In a critical event like ransomware , the original environment , be it a cloud or on-premises server is often unavailable to recover damaged workloads , via a backup as it is typically cordoned off as a crime scene , and the environment might still be compromised . In order to recover quickly and avoid costly downtime , workloads sometimes need to be recovered to a new temporary environment , like a different cloud for example .
As organisations strive to manage their IT environments and avoid financial and cyber security surprises , it is important to constantly assess what data and applications you have , and where they are kept . But to manage this and adjust as needed , businesses must build with portability in mind .
By doing this , businesses can create a more agile and cost-effective cloud environment and will find it easier to bounce back and recover from disasters like ransomware . p
74 INTELLIGENTCIO MIDDLE EAST www . intelligentcio . com