We’re updating our incident response plan and I’m overwhelmed by the conflicting advice. With the shift in Cybersecurity Trends toward data exfiltration rather than just encryption, should we prioritize immutable backups or advanced encryption for our local file servers?
3 answers
You absolutely need both, but if you have to choose one for immediate recovery, go with immutable backups. If the hackers steal your data, that’s a legal and PR nightmare, but if they encrypt your systems and you can't restore them, your business stops entirely. We moved our critical backups to a "write-once-read-many" cloud storage. Even if they get our admin credentials, they can't delete the recovery points. It gave our board a lot of peace of mind. Also, make sure you're testing those restores monthly; a backup is only good if it actually works during a crisis.
Does your cloud provider charge extra for the immutability feature, or is it included in the standard enterprise tier for most vendors?
Don't forget about "clean rooms." You need a dedicated, isolated environment to scan your backups for malware before you restore them to production.
Great point about the clean room. Restoring a "hidden" ransomware trigger back into your fresh system is a mistake you only make once!
Most major providers like AWS or Azure have it as a toggle, but there is usually a slight storage premium. In my opinion, that extra 10-15% on the bill is way cheaper than paying a multi-million dollar ransom or losing two weeks of productivity.