Data Backup The ‘Last Line Of Defense’ Against Ransomware

Data management and recovery specialist Veeam is working with its partners to provide customers with a multi-layer approach -- including data backup -- to defend customers against ransomware, executives said during the NexGen 2021 conference.

Ransomware attacks don‘t discriminate. These security breaches are on the rise and are plaguing businesses of all sizes, requiring a “layered approach” to offense from both vendors and solution providers.

Data management and recovery specialist Veeam, an IT company that does 100 percent of its business through the channel, is working with partners in the cybersecurity realm because data recovery and cybersecurity go hand-in-hand, said John Alexander, Veeam Cloud and Service Provider aggregation manager, during his keynote at the Channel Company’s NexGen 2021 conference on Monday.

“Data backup is absolutely the last line of defense against ransomware,” said Tony Cody, president of 12 Points Technologies, a solution provider focused on cybersecurity.

12 Points Technologies, based in Omaha, Neb., is working with Veeam today with a customer that already had the vendor’s solution in their environment. Unfortunately, the customer suffered a ransomware attack. But 12 Points, working with Veeam, was able to get the customer’s data back in just a few hours, Cody said. “It was pretty impressive,” he added.

12 Points takes a layered approach to cybersecurity, with backup at the end of the line.

“We‘re backing up databases, as long as it doesn’t impact performance, multiple times a day,” he said. ”You have to figure out your recovery point objective, and I only want to lose two hours of data.”

[Related: Veeam Adds Veeam Backup For Google Cloud Platform]

Data protection is the foundation of the IT landscape of applications that employees are using every day -- one step in a multi-layered approach to tackling ransomware, Veeam’s Alexander said.

“To address [ransomware] we have to go down through the layers, working with multiple partners to provide a comprehensive solution,” he said. With data protection as the last line of defense, it‘s critical that businesses and partners have confidence in that solution, he added.

The ransomware issue will only get worse as hackers become more sophisticated at compromising data, Alexander said. “We need to make sure we meet that challenge.”

Veeam earlier this year added continuous data protection into its standard licensing for instantaneous backup and recovery, Alexander said. “This is for no extra cost-- it‘s part of doing business with Veeam,” he added.

Born into the virtualization space, Veeam today partners with the leading cloud giants, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud. The company also works with IT and data management system vendors such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp, among others.