5 BCDR Oversights That Leave You Exposed to Ransomware

Ransomware isn’t just a buzzword; it’s one of the most dreaded challenges businesses face in this increasingly digitized world. Ransomware attacks are not only increasing in frequency but also in sophistication, with new ransomware groups constantly emerging. Their attack methods are evolving rapidly, becoming more dangerous and damaging than ever. Almost all respondents (99.8%) in a recent survey said they are concerned about the risk of identity information, session cookies and other data being extracted from devices infected with malware, activities highly correlated to a future ransomware attack.^[1]

The harsh reality is that ransomware threats aren’t going away anytime soon. Despite organizations’ best efforts to prevent these attacks, breaches still happen. As such, backup and disaster recovery become your critical last line of defense against these growing threats. However, many organizations overlook essential disaster recovery (DR) practices, leaving them vulnerable to cyberattacks and data disasters.

To combat cyberthreats effectively, your organization must develop a comprehensive DR plan and test it regularly to ensure its efficacy and reliability. Your organization’s ability to respond to cyber incidents quickly depends on proactive preparation. The following three strategies are key to protecting your last line of defense and ensuring successful recovery.

Audit the data: This ensures that data scattered in multiple places is protected, confirms backup integrity and reduces blind spots.

Create resilience: Build robust systems that endure disruptions through local access controls, encryption, immutability and backup isolation.

Recover with insight: Enables informed, efficient recovery with minimized business impact through regular DR testing, measuring recovery effectiveness and detecting anomalies in backups.

This article will examine the five business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) mistakes businesses make that can result in catastrophic breaches and business disruptions.

5 BCDR oversights that leave you exposed

BCDR strategies are critical to safeguard your business against data loss, downtime and cyberthreats. However, even well-prepared organizations often tend to overlook critical aspects that leave them vulnerable. We’ll explore five common BCDR oversights that could put your business at risk and offer insights to strengthen your resilience against evolving threats.

1. Thinking local immutability is safe enough

Although local immutability adds a layer of defense, ensuring data cannot be altered or changed, relying solely on local immutability can present significant risks. Internal threats, such as compromised credentials, misconfigured controls or insider actions, can allow threat actors to disable immutability settings. After that, they can lay dormant, waiting for immutability flags to expire before encrypting or deleting data.

In smaller environments with limited physical space or budget, performing multiple backup and recovery tasks on one server increases vulnerability, exposing backup data to potential system bugs or security breaches.

Additionally, physical access by an insider can directly bypass immutability by booting from a live CD or USB, allowing backups to be stolen, deleted or encrypted.

Here are a few recommendations to achieve true immutability and safeguard your data against ransomware.

• The most effective way to protect your backups from ransomware is to replicate them to a secure, immutable cloud storage location off-site.
• Partner with backup and DR solution providers like Unitrends that replicate backups to several cloud destinations, including Forever Cloud, where data is stored in an immutable format.
• Unitrends uses predictive analytics to check the presence of ransomware and alerts IT administrators if signs of ransomware are detected.
• Use advanced technologies like Unitrends Recovery Assurance that automatically performs disaster recovery tests to determine if backups are clean and recoverable.

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Relying on Windows-based backup software

Microsoft Windows is the world’s most widely used computer operating system, with a whopping 67% OS market share.^[2] Due to its widespread use and popularity, Windows is also a prime target among ransomware groups.

Although the Windows threat landscape is fragmented due to numerous versions and releases, certain commonalities pose risks. Many Windows services are configured to run by default, making them frequent targets for cybercriminals seeking access vectors within the Windows ecosystem.

Threat actors may use a mix of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) scripts, vssadmin.exe commands or PowerShell scripts to automatically delete backups. Windows-based backup infrastructure is just as susceptible to ransomware attacks as any other Windows-based component within the data center. Additionally, if the backup server is located in the same physical space as the infrastructure it protects, the risk becomes even greater.

Here are a few ways you can strengthen your defenses against Window-based software attacks.

• Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) are publicly disclosed information security issues. Tracking CVEs is essential for identifying potential vulnerabilities in your software stack and staying updated on vendor advisories.
• Use hardened, Linux-based backup appliances to isolate backups from the virtual infrastructure and keep them outside the Windows attack surface.

2. Not protecting SaaS data

With Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications becoming an integral part of modern business operations, protecting your SaaS data is now non-negotiable. Today, SaaS apps, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Salesforce, hold large volumes of business-critical data. Unlike traditional data stored behind company firewalls, SaaS data resides in the cloud, outside the organization’s direct control. Additionally, relying solely on native cloud recovery options could prove to be fatal in the event of a ransomware attack since they lack the robust, granular restore capabilities needed for a quick recovery.

Threat actors understand these shifts and are increasingly targeting cloud users. According to IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2024, cyberattacks involving valid stolen or compromised credentials rose by over 70% year-over-year.^[3]

To better protect your SaaS data from ransomware, consider implementing these key recommendations:

• Implement third-party backup solutions that are purpose-built for SaaS environments.
• Follow the 3-2-1 backup rule. Look for a vendor that provides data storage outside the production cloud environment.
• Enforce multifactor authentication (MFA) to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access through stolen credentials.
• Ensure your data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Invest in a SaaS backup solution that provides regular backups and recovery testing to ensure your data can be restored efficiently in the event of a ransomware attack.
• Industry leaders like Unitrends offer dark web monitoring for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, which scans the dark web for compromised or stolen employee credentials.

3. Insufficient recovery testing

Insufficient or partial recovery testing exposes your organization to critical risks by creating gaps in your DR readiness. When recovery tests are infrequent or lack depth, they provide only limited assurance that systems can fully recover in the event of a crisis. Simply performing high-level or screenshot verifications, for instance, may confirm that backups are bootable. However, they still may not reveal issues, such as corrupted data or misconfigured applications, that might only appear once you log in.

This lack of comprehensive testing becomes especially risky when ransomware impacts multiple systems. The interdependencies among servers, such as Active Directory supporting SQL, web services and other applications, mean that restoring one system correctly doesn’t guarantee that all others will function as expected.

Insufficient recovery testing can result in prolonged downtime, failed recoveries, loss of critical data and operational disruption, impacting business continuity and escalating costs associated with restoring services.

Follow these steps to ensure your DR plan works when you need it the most:

• Conduct detailed application-level recovery testing to ensure all critical applications and their dependencies function correctly after restoration. Application-level testing goes beyond verifying that servers are simply bootable. It confirms that each application, along with its interconnected systems, operates as intended. Regular application-level recovery tests help identify hidden issues like data corruption, configuration errors, or dependency failures, which can prevent applications from running smoothly post-recovery.
• Many organizations fail to perform recovery tests regularly since it’s time-consuming and resource-intensive. Look for a vendor that supports automated DR testing, like Unitrends Recovery Assurance, which automates recovery testing locally and in the Unitrends Cloud without impacting your production workloads. It extends beyond merely validating server restoration to testing recovery at the application level.

4. Relying on manual recovery processes

Manual recovery processes are time-consuming and increase the chance of human error. Your IT administrator may overlook a critical step, misconfigure a system or restore files in the wrong order. In a ransomware attack, where multiple systems may be impacted, even small mistakes in recovery processes can lead to major setbacks, potentially corrupting data further or leading to extended downtime.

In a ransomware scenario where every minute matters, depending on manual recovery could increase data exposure and the damage caused by the attack. Since ransomware can encrypt data rapidly, the time taken to manually restore systems often cannot keep pace, which can impact recovery.

Look for a BCDR solution that enables you to automate and orchestrate tiered recovery workflows for both testing and DR. In Unitrends BCDR solutions, you can orchestrate application and system failover from certified recovery points to a predefined recovery target in the event of a disaster.

5. Ransomware resilience with Unified BCDR

Ransomware is undeniably a formidable adversary, capable of wreaking havoc on businesses of all sizes. However, the good news is you can protect your business and data from these threats with a resilient BCDR solution, like Unitrends Unified Backup. This all-in-one backup and disaster recovery solution from Unitrends safeguards your data against ransomware, data loss and downtime — no matter where it lives. Whether your organization’s critical data is stored on on-premises data centers, in the cloud, within SaaS applications or on endpoints, Unitrends protects it all. Achieve 100% recovery confidence from ransomware and other data threats. Get a personalized demo to experience the powerful capabilities of Unitrends all-in-one backup and disaster recovery platform.

About Unitrends

Unitrends makes efficient, reliable backup and recovery as effortless and hassle-free as possible. It combines deep expertise gained over 30 years of focusing on backup and recovery with next-generation backup appliances and cloud purpose-built to make data protection simpler, more automated and more resilient than any other solution in the industry.