An advanced solution for an often-overlooked part of the security world
Ransomware remains a major threat to organizations, with the number of attacks continuing to rise. Research shows that 54 percent of affected organizations pay the ransom, while 27 percent of those do not get their data back even after payment. To protect yourself, advanced solutions are necessary, says Fundaments. The Enschede-based Cloud Service Provider now has such an advanced solution in-house: Ransomware Recovery with AI.
Published by Dutch IT Channel
Eduard Keijzer (pictured), partner manager at Fundaments, uses the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to describe what he sees happening in the market. The guideline aims to help organizations improve their cybersecurity and consists of five elements: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. Keijzer: “A divide is emerging in the market. Many large security players do everything they can to prevent incidents and analyze them afterward. That is good and must continue. But it is essentially limited to the first four elements of the NIST model. These parties expect partners to take on the ‘recover’ component. That is where we often see things go wrong between partners and vendors. One expects the other to do it, and vice versa. Partners don’t always have the right expertise in-house for that, either.”
Financial loss
The fact that the ‘recover’ component is being neglected is a problem, because the importance of fast and effective recovery is significant, Keijzer explains. “I recently asked a client to calculate what it would cost them to be down for eight hours. Many clients can’t even name a figure because they’ve never thought about it. This client estimated it would cost 100,000 euros. They had their security well in order, including disaster recovery. When I asked about it, it turned out they had an RPO (Recovery Point Objective) of four hours. That means four hours of data loss, so in this case, a financial loss of 50,000 euros. How great would it be if you could reduce that four-hour window to 15 seconds?”
“Ransomware is a major challenge, and prevention alone is not enough,” he says. “Ransomware recovery is truly a must. In more than half of the cases where ransomware becomes active, the backup is also compromised. How do you perform recovery then? We fill that gap with our Ransomware Recovery with AI solution.”
Minimal downtime and data loss
As the name suggests, the solution uses artificial intelligence to protect against ransomware attacks. Anomalies, such as abnormal encryption, are detected within seconds thanks to smart algorithms. “By replicating continuously, you discover certain patterns. If something suspicious happens, the alarm bells go off.” Immediate action is taken, and recovery can be performed to a safe point just seconds before the attack, keeping downtime and data loss to a minimum.
Keijzer: “You can spin up a new environment within half an hour using the data you have protected. Subsequently, security analysts can investigate what happened and lock the open doors again. After that, you unlock everything from our sovereign and Dutch cloud platform. By serving your primary processes from a different location, you can survive a ransomware attack within a few hours. You only have a few seconds of data loss, so the total impact remains very limited. Once your primary processes are running, you can rebuild your existing environment at your own pace.”
Isolated test environment
The solution is not only interesting for large companies with big budgets, Keijzer emphasizes: “If you classify your data properly, you can determine which applications with critical data you want to equip with this service. That will be about thirty percent of your total data on average. With us, you only pay for that thirty percent. The solution is very granular. You can purchase the service starting from 500 euros per month. Moreover, the impact on your performance is minimal. You also don’t need high-bandwidth connections between different locations. You don’t have to make a large investment, and that is the strength of this solution.”
It also doesn’t matter to what extent you are in the cloud as an organization. “You can use it in an on-premises situation, if your IaaS environment runs at Fundaments, and also if you use the public cloud, such as Azure. There are all kinds of use cases for this distinctive service, which allows you to address this overlooked piece of the security world.”
The isolated test environment you create is ideal for tasks such as performing updates, testing applications, and conducting stress tests, Keijzer explains. “Meanwhile, the replication of your live environment continues as normal. With this service, you not only reduce the impact of ransomware, but you also make your IT environment much more lean and mean by using your functionality differently.”
Together with partners
Fundaments is a company that works extensively through partners, so Keijzer sees an important role for them. “They can offer this service. We can support them with whitepapers, mailings, and proposal templates, all of which are ready to go. We are truly seeking collaboration with partners here. For example, we go to their clients together. We can also help create a broader business continuity plan for end users. We are always open to new partners to enter into that collaboration. Because we are used to working with partners, we know exactly what they expect from us in terms of knowledge, expertise, and, above all, ethics.”
For end users, it doesn’t end with having this service, Keijzer emphasizes in closing. And that offers extra opportunities for partners. “Having the solution is one thing; testing it is another. You must conduct a failover test at least once or twice a year. For partners, there is a revenue model in guiding that process. With every test, a test report is created, in which you as an end client can see the order and speed at which VMs are started. For IT managers, it is very valuable to be able to present such a test report to management, because you can show how quickly an environment can be back up after a disaster. During an audit, such a report is also worth its weight in gold. So, as a partner, you can add a lot of value around this solution.”
You can read more information about our Ransomware Recovery with AI solution here.
