Your ransomware solution — NetApp and Azure can help

Ransomware—perhaps the scariest word that a business can hear. And rightly so, because ransomware attacks increased by 73% in the last year, with attacks targeting a company’s most critical asset: their data.

Experts predict that by 2031, ransomware attacks will happen every 2 seconds and will cost victims $265 billion annually. Ransomware is so nefarious because, on top of ransom payments, you have to survive the cost of recovery and downtime, which adds up fast. In fact, ransomware recovery costs have increased by over 47% in the last three years.

In Azure, like in other public clouds, ransomware tops the list of user concerns. NetApp can help.

One reason for ransomware’s uptick is that most companies—a whopping 76% of them—pay the ransom. Also, without effective ransomware detection and protection for your systems, hackers can more easily infiltrate them because evolving and complex work environments provide innumerable points of entry. Where there were one or two doors before, cybercriminals now have several windows and a zillion sizable cracks through which to squeeze. And let’s not forget the ever-expanding tools that hackers use to finagle their way inside, including:

• Web application credentials
• Phishing emails
• Exploiting web application vulnerabilities

But there’s some good news: Although the bad actors have more tools, so can you.

To combat a data threat like ransomware, you need a data-centric approach and an overall goal of cyber resilience. When you fully protect your data—from the inside out—your business can more easily weather any storm. Your cyber-resilience plan should help your organization:

• Protect. Block malware and prevent unauthorized access.
• Detect. Identify threats and anomalies in real time by using AI-driven insights that flag threats early.
• Recover. Minimize downtime with proper protection that includes automated responses and rapid recovery.

An obvious but often overlooked way to protect your data is to continually verify and monitor who is accessing it and why. A Zero Trust architecture puts security measures as close to the data as possible, helping your organization combat every phase of a potential attack with technology that includes:

• Continuous verification
• Data segmentation
• Continuous monitoring

When data is segmented into smaller, less accessible buckets, and an effective monitoring system is in place that verifies but never trusts, the threat of ransomware feels a lot less terrifying.

In Azure, and anywhere else for that matter, the best data defense is comprehensive, continuous, and simple. When you protect and secure your data, you strengthen your cyber resilience.

NetApp^® ransomware solutions for Azure give your organization multifaceted threat protection, including:

• Speedy, efficient NetApp Snapshot™ copies, instant database cloning, and cross-region replication and backup
• A secure, logical air gap
• An industry-leading security and compliance portfolio
• AI-driven user and storage anomaly detection
• Forensic analysis

NetApp BlueXP
When you have multiple solutions with different approaches to data protection and security, it helps to be able to simplify management from a unified control plane. Whether your data lives on Azure or in a hybrid cloud environment, the NetApp BlueXP™ unified control plane streamlines visibility for simple, comprehensive protection. You get:

• Unified data management and services from a single control plane
• Integrated capabilities for observability, classification, replication, and backup and recovery
• Open architectures to integrate data and to operate with other platforms

With the NetApp portfolio of solutions for Azure, you can guard against ransomware, build cyber resilience, increase uptime, and enable fast recovery.

Don’t leave your Azure data and your organization vulnerable. Strengthen your cyber resilience with NetApp solutions. Explore NetApp’s suite of cyber-resilience solutions for Azure to find the right mix. Ready to start now? Meet with one of our specialists.