Ransomware attacks have gotten more sophisticated with hackers focusing on the long game, hiding and ambushing their victims when they feel most protected. That’s what happened to one energy research laboratory. Once the ransomware infiltrated the company’s systems, it sat for days undetected before it was triggered.
Though the company had a backup solution in place, the malicious payload was able to spread to another location, compromising 2 facilities, running and replicating until it made the company’s disaster recovery solution inoperable. The company had a choice to make, pay the large sums it would take to de-encrypt their data or reach out to their trusted storage advisor, iTBlueprint, to make things right.
Prior to the attack, IT leaders were confident they had a backup in place that would diminish the impact of an attack, but they took advantage of an iTBlueprint Health Check just to be sure. iTBlueprint’s experienced engineering team took a look at the laboratory’s physical infrastructure and their threat level and recommended the use of NetApp Snapshot.
Using NetApp Snapshot to make point-in-time, read-only copies of their data inoculated it from being infected by the ransomware when it struck. A month later when the attack occurred, they had snapshots of their data which helped them get back on their feet in record time.
Though the ransomware wreaked havoc on their entire system, taking weeks to get fully up in running as they filled in gaps found in their firewall and other security measures, their storage was retrieved in hours thanks to snapshots. This mitigated the need to pay the incredible ransom and put them on alert to ensure this wouldn’t happen again. Taking snapshots not only protected their backups from hostile encryption, it prevented the deletion of their valuable backup data.
Since taking regular snapshots of their data doesn’t overwhelm their storage capacity—using very little space—the company can protect their data, and themselves, without the huge expense of constantly adding extra backup space. Whether storing their data in the cloud or on-premises, NetApp Snapshot empowers the laboratory to simplify their data archive.
Even though they had a backup in place, and were confident of its reliability, the IT team covered all their bases with and iTBlueprint Health Check. Without this checkup, the company could have been looking at a million-dollar price tag to get their data back. iTBlueprint engineers shared their best practices when it comes to optimizing storage, which included taking advantage of NetApp Snapshot, so the company could get a greater return on their technology investment. At the time of the Health Check, they didn’t know how great that return could actually be. But after the attack, they realized how much they saved—in money, time, consumer confidence, and peace of mind.
