Business Continuity: Are You Sure You’re Ready?

Oscar Wilde once stated, “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” In continuing our look into being prepared during Cybersecurity Awareness Month, our second installment will focus on business continuity, what it entails, and the ongoing process to ensure it doesn’t become a "set it and forget it.”

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, but it’s about more than just awareness. It’s important that your organization is prepared for the inevitability of facing cyberthreats.

I can remember the moment clearly: I was in an early-morning meeting with several of my employees. Several minutes into the meeting, my mobile phone came to life with notifications and a call. Shortly after answering, there was a knock at the door. Almost instantly, I did not feel so well; I knew this couldn’t be good. As if it were rehearsed for stereo effect, I heard the words no one ever wants to hear: “I think we’ve been hacked.” My first response was, “Not possible!” Turns out, it was very possible and very much a reality. To be fully transparent, I thought my life and professional career were over in that moment; 25 years down the drain just like that! I took the cyberattack very personal.

As an Executive Director at one of the largest school districts in my state, I had officially become the next victim of ransomware.

The continuing evolution of ransomware attacks requires innovative, protective solutions. Dell has led the protection of the data center with the Cyber Recovery solution, which is the only solution certified by Sheltered Harbor. It implements a digital air-gap solution that provides a dedicated replica isolated from the production environment. The isolation limits risks associated with remote threats identifying, accessing, and corrupting the backup data. In order to identify when a ransomware attack has occurred, Dell has partnered with Index Engines to monitor the backup data stream. CyberSense from Index Engines uses machine learning to identify changes in the backup data and alert when the appearance of an attack occurs.

Organizations today have a multi-cloud presence. By that, I mean that on-premises data centers are no longer the standard in IT. Businesses require application mobility to meet the ever-increasing demand for data and information at light speeds, and thus it is very typical for an organization to have several deployments of multi-cloud data centers to fit these demands and needs. Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Unified Communications as a Service, Edge, and IoT Computing are just a few of the potential multi-cloud deployments, on top of the on-premises and co-located data centers in different regions and geo-locations. 

The Healthcare sector (often known as Healthcare and Public Health, or HPH) is currently under an all-out cyber-attack, again focused on hospitals and ransomware gangs of cybercriminals.

Should the dreaded day that your organization suffers a ransomware attack arrive, the severity of the damage could vary from a simple file system encryption to a total lockout. Depending upon the misfortune your IT team is dealt with, the recovery process could possibly consist of a total wipe of the servers, storage, backups, especially critical systems, logical configurations, and property. The most difficult thing to swallow is when you thought you had everything covered in your disaster recovery or backup systems—only to find out the opposite is true.

Who moved my cheese… and my data?

Every 11 seconds, someone within the United States is infected with ransomware. That means that by the time you finish reading this blog post, almost 30 people will have their data locked and encrypted unless they pay a cybercriminal a ransom of hundreds or thousands of dollars (hopefully it’s not YOU!).