With the threat of ransomware on the rise, organizations have been further increasing their IT security to makes sure that they are prepared for it. However, no matter how well you prepare you can never guarantee that no threats will ever pass through. This is where backup solutions such as Unitrends come in. Updates such as ransomware detection for both Unitrends Recovery Series physical appliances and Unitrends Backup virtual appliances can help determine the probability that ransomware is operating within your server workstation or desktop. They even alert you when it does detect ransomware so you may immediately restore your files from your last legitimate recovery point.
The Unitrends backup ‘game changer’
Richard Malewicz, CIO of Livingston County, Mich., has been a user of Unitrends Recovery RC936S and Unitrends Cloud since January 2016, and he called the ransomware detection a “game changer.”
“[Unitrends has] brought forth a functionality and capability to the data backup market in such a particular way where it did not exist previously,” Malewicz wrote in an email interview.
“It’s often said that a data backup system is the last line of defense in a ransomware attack, but in actuality, a traditional backup system isn’t defensive at all. When you restore data from a backup system after a ransomware attack, it’s an indication the enterprise’s cyberdefenses have failed. It is merely a risk management contingency operation at that point.”
An estimation of around 4,000 ransomware attacks on average per day in 2016 (by the U.S. government), a big jump from 2015 where 1,000 attacks per day were estimated on average.
“[Ransomware detection] will be a feature that continues to evolve and improve with the product,” Brady said.