5 Tips to Ensuring a Secure BDR Solution in 2014

A wide gap still exists between the nature of malware threats and the defense mechanisms some companies use to defend against them, despite warnings from a variety of resources ranging from telcos including Verizon and its 2013 Data Breach Investigation Report, and industry associations such as CompTIA.

In fact, earlier this year, Intronis sponsored an IT services industry survey in conjunction with the 2112 Group based on feedback from 350 channel IT companies. One of the most shocking findings was that 44 percent of the group admitted to not proactively selling business continuity and data recovery (BCDR) services to their clients — their strategy is to simply wait for clients to come to them with problems. This is exactly the approach to security and disaster recovery the creators of malicious attacks like the CryptoLocker ransomware virus want you to take.

Don’t wait and see what happens in the New Year. Take control of your customers’ infrastructure and help protect it. Here are five practical tips for changing your security and backup strategy in 2014:

1. Develop Smart Security Policies. You can deploy Windows software restriction policies, group policy objects, and/or local policies to prevent executables from running from certain paths (e.g. %appdata% or %localappdata%), where viruses like CryptoLocker are most likely to reside. There are even low-cost tools (e.g. CryptoPrevent Premium) that will automate these steps for you (although you may have to manually deselect some legitimate programs, such as Spotify, which these tools may also block).
2. Keep AV and Antimalware Subscriptions Updated. Many AV and anti-malware solutions do a good job of quickly coming out with patches once viruses are detected in the wild, but if customers aren’t current on their software licensing, or their apps aren’t automatically being updated, they’re leaving themselves vulnerable to the latest threats.
3. Educate Users on Security Best Practices. While it may be common sense to the average MSP to avoid opening attachments from unfamiliar emails and to heed an AV software’s warning that a website may contain “malicious code,” these concepts are foreign to many people who don’t work in IT for a living. Helping your customers develop Internet usage policies and actually training them in best practices can go a long way in helping them mitigate malware threats.
4. Use Email Filtering Software. One of the primary conduits of viruses is email – whether from phishing schemes coming in to a company or infected computers perpetuating the problem. Using email filtering software to detect and block executable files from being transmitted via email will significantly reduce a customer’s chances of becoming infected with a computer virus like CryptoLocker.
5. Back Up Important Data Off-Site and in the Cloud. The fact is, eventually security defenses will be breached — whether it’s due to an intentional outside threat like CryptoLocker or an inside threat from a negligent or disgruntled employee. As a result, no security strategy is complete without a proper backup system that features offsite cloud backup, as well as a quick onsite recovery solution. Here’s a quick example: When it comes to building a defense against CryptoLocker, which specifically targets files, an offsite file-based backup solution that maintains precise version controls is most appropriate. With this type of solution, even if your “bad data” gets uploaded to the cloud, you can still revert to the earlier “good data.” Additionally, a viable offsite backup solution should support end-to-end data encryption, the offsite data should be stored in an SSAE-16 compliant data center, and the data should be quickly recoverable to the customer’s premise should a data restore become necessary.

Want a real world example? One of our top-performing partners Pact-One received a call from a cosmetic dental client who had inadvertently launched CryptoLocker on its network and by the time the partner responded to the problem, nearly 1 TB of the practice’s data had been infected. Making matters worse was the fact that the client was several weeks behind on its local backups. Fortunately Pact-One was proactive and the client’s data was being backed up daily to the Intronis cloud. Because of this dual approach to data protection, Pact-One was able to recover all of the client’s files within a 24-hour period.  

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Be proactive and have the conversation now with your clients about the importance of having both on and offsite backup in 2014. 

See a CryptoLocker-defense success story from Damian Barry, president of Global Business Technologies in our cloud backup blog. You can subscribe to receive our blog updates right in your email by going to bit.ly/intronisblog.

Nathan Bradbury is a Solutions Engineer at Intronis, a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery provider that works closely with VARs and MSPs.