Azure cyber resilience: Keep your data protected and secure from the inside out

Today’s digital landscape—rapidly evolving and full of multifaceted threats—demands that organizations like yours adopt technologies that offer more than a single layer of protection. Assuming a posture of when, not if, you’ll experience a cyberincident is critical to protect your business from future attacks. 

Let’s face facts, cyberthreats aren’t going away. They’re becoming increasingly common and costly:

• Ransomware attacks happen every 11 seconds.
• The average cost to remediate a ransomware attack in 2024 was $2.73M.
• In 2023, 59% of companies experienced a ransomware attack.
• 74% of data breaches are caused by human involvement.

So, what should savvy businesses like yours do to guard against threats, downtime, and data loss?

Prioritize multilayered solutions that take a data-centric approach, build in redundancy, and enhance both data protection and security. Strengthen your Azure cyber resilience with solutions that optimize and safeguard your most valuable asset—your data.

Because modern threats are diverse and can compromise your data from multiple angles, your Azure data needs more than simple backup and perimeter/endpoint security.

Internal

Data theft, use of unauthorized devices, and deliberate and inadvertent data sharing are some of the most common internal data threats. But did you know that your cyber-resilience efforts (or lack thereof) could also be labeled a threat?

A recent report listed a “lack of investment, preparedness, and resilience” as one of the top cybersecurity risks that companies face in 2023. The authors pulled no punches, explicitly blaming organizations for their compounding vulnerabilities because companies:

• Insufficiently prepare for cyberdisasters
• Fail to invest in resilience-building solutions

External

While malicious actors have long jeopardized data, the worse news is that it’s getting easier for them to get what they want. With more tools than ever, including social media, encryption, and AI-generated content, hackers can launch full-scale warfare roughly a thousand times a second. Whether it’s through malware, malvertising, or ransomware, after your system has been breached, cybercriminals can extract information for months.

Cybersecurity and cyber resilience are part of the same conversation, but they aren’t synonymous. Cybersecurity is one piece of a holistic solution that enables cyber resilience in the cloud.

We like to break it out this way:

Cyber resilience = data protection (data availability and data recovery) + data security (threat detection and threat remediation).

Cybersecurity alone can no longer keep pace with evolving threats, because the digital landscape has become more nuanced with:

• Increased endpoints
• Bring-your-own-device policies
• Remote work
• Complex network environments

Obviously, prevention is the best cure, but because the high cost of data loss and downtime can put many companies out of business, recovery time has become a key aspect of resilience. The ability to bounce back faster, stronger, and better will separate organizations who have prepared from those companies who haven’t.

With a comprehensive approach, you have the right setup in place before an attack happens.

Achieving cyber resilience requires some initial legwork and a multisolution setup. Use the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework to understand your current systems and what’s needed to keep your business moving forward no matter what happens:

1. Identify. Do you have a complete picture of where your data lives today and where your biggest vulnerabilities are?
2. Protect. Do you encrypt your data, conduct regular backups, control user access, use perimeter defenses, regularly update vulnerable systems, and train users about best practices?
3. Detect. Do you use systems that identify suspicious activity before it creates downtime or data loss?
4. Respond. Does your team know what to do in a crisis, with clear plans for a cohesive response?
5. Recover. If a cyberincident occurs, can you get back up and running quickly?

Answering these questions about your Azure data can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Take our assessment to see where you are now, and learn how NetApp can help.

The best data defense is comprehensive, continuous, and simple. That’s why NetApp offers a data-centric approach and a portfolio of solutions that can help you meet the challenges of ransomware and other cyberthreats. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP^® for Azure and Azure NetApp Files are designed to meet the needs of IT and security teams to protect and to secure your data across on-premises and Azure environments. Built on NetApp ONTAP storage management software, Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Azure NetApp Files integrate with NetApp data services that enhance visibility, detect threats, and automate response and recovery.

NetApp BlueXP

Imagine the simplicity of managing your hybrid cloud environment through a single control plane. With the NetApp BlueXP™ unified control plane, you can achieve global visibility and operational simplicity for data management and services through technology that offers:

• AIOps-driven automation
• Intelligent insights
• Flexible consumption
• Integrated services for data deployment, management, observability, and application usage
• Open architectures for integration with other platforms

BlueXP and the NetApp portfolio of solutions for Azure can help you overcome your most critical IT challenges.

Disaster recovery

NetApp technology enables business as usual by:

• Keeping your critical data and apps accessible 24/7
• Facilitating collaboration when failures occur
• Protecting your data wherever it lives

Backup and recovery

NetApp solutions help your business:

• Restore data after malicious or unintentional deletion, manipulation, or a natural disaster
• Restart systems quickly after upgrade or configuration
• Achieve long-term retention
• Prepare a development and testing (DevTest) environment
• Comply with audit regulations

Ransomware protection

NetApp solutions deliver advanced protection and security to your organization by:

• Blocking malware and malicious access
• Identifying threats and anomalies in real time
• Minimizing downtime by preventing deletion and encryption
• Enabling rapid recovery if an attack occurs

Governance and compliance

And NetApp provides tools that help you meet current rules and regulations, with effortless:

• Data analysis
• Data retention
• Storage optimization
• Monitoring and investigation

Strengthen your cyber resilience on Azure with NetApp. Explore the NetApp suite of cyber-resilience solutions to find the right mix for your organization.

Are you ready to start now, or do you have questions? Get a free 1:1 strategy session with one of our cyber-resilience experts.