Data protection during Covid-19 crisis: Why Object storage matters - Prashanth GJ, CEO, Technobind

What is the one thing that thrived tremendously during this pandemic? In all probability, the answer is –ransomware. Let’s look at some numbers: Ransomware attacks witnessed a 150 percent surge in the month of March, most of which used Covid-19 as a bait.

Across the globe, healthcare organizations and critical infrastructure organizations have become soft targets for ransomware attackers during Covid-19 crisis. There were reports of ransomware apps disguised as official Covid-19 tracing tools targeting android users. More recently, we also read about the Dharma ransomware-as-service attacks targeting SMBs by exploiting vulnerabilities in Remote Desktop Protocol.

Earlier this year, World Economic Forum identified ransomware as one of the top five economic threats facing organizations. The shift to work from home models have only accelerated the frequency of these attacks, due to weaker endpoint security controls and the likelihood of users falling prey to phishing emails.

Once it hits, as we all know, ransomware encrypts an organization’s data and makes it inaccessible. Many victims choose to pay up to restore the access especially during a crisis---because that seems like the easy way out.

Unfortunately, even the strongest prevention mechanisms against ransomware eventually fail as attack methods evolve. The reality is, organizations need to prepare for the worst, and they need to do that with lesser budgets and resources.

Object storage shows the way

While prevention mechanisms are critical to fight against ransomware, organizations are increasingly focusing on putting an attack-proof recovery strategy in place. And this strategy, interestingly, is centred around storage, rather than any security tool!

Object storage, for example, is now emerging as an effective technology to thwart ransomware’s encryption through secure backup. Unlike traditional backup technologies—which are highly vulnerable to re-infections—object storage can be made unchangeable with WORM (Write Once, Read Many) technology. Because data cannot be modified for the specified time, this ensures that data cannot be encrypted either—adding another layer of security against ransomware attacks.

Through our partnership with Cloudian, a leader in S3-compatible object storage, we are bringing this revolutionary technology to our customers.

We already have quite a lot of immediate takers for this technology—not just for ransomware protection, but for a whole lot of data protection challenges that organization face. Object storage is fast becoming the preferred choice for data backups of prolonged period, by replacing costly purpose-built appliances, or maintenance-intensive tape libraries.

Why this is relevant for the partner community

The global pandemic has compelled organizations to drastically reduce IT budgets. At the same time, IT leaders must continue to address the growing mandates from the business. They need to also manage the data growth, new risks and the overall data protection lifecycle more effectively than before.

In this context, IT leaders are taking some hard decision and looking beyond some of the established ways of bringing efficiency and cost reduction. For example, for many organizations, public cloud may really not be the most cost-effective option when it comes to storage or data protection. General purpose storage, on the other hand, has always been an expensive proposition.

They are trying to bring the best of both worlds with security being a key priority. Imagine being able to showcase substantial cost-reduction, great value and improved efficiencies all in one shot. This is exactly what a product like Cloudian’s S3-compatible object storage platform brings to the table.

So, tell what a CIO wants to hear. Be the technology avant-garde.