As external threat actors who use ransomware, phishing and other attack vectors continue to evolve their capabilities, so, too, must IT cybersecurity and data protection professionals continually up their game. A ransomware attack that prevents access to IT systems and data can shut down an organization.

Given the threat environment IT professionals face in 2020, effective preventive measures for your ransomware backup strategy include having a highly protected network perimeter plus data backup and disaster recovery plans. But are they enough?

Ransomware protection that uses artificial intelligence is currently gaining momentum. An AI component not only examines data packets using a large database of digital signatures, it also analyzes suspicious data packets.

From a data backup perspective, perhaps the best ransomware backup strategy is to have critical data, systems and resources backed up to an alternate location. On-site and remote storage options are plentiful and varied, so examine the options carefully. Some of the issues to examine include:

location of storage resources, particularly how close they are to the organization’s primary location;
on-site versus hosted storage options;
amount of network bandwidth for large data downloads and system recoveries in an emergency;
criticality of the data and systems being backed up, so your organization can access them on a priority basis in an emergency;
frequency of data backups, especially as stated by recovery point objectives;
multiple data storage facilities, so that data can be backed up to two or more storage locations;
data encryption technologies to further protect data;
secure access methodologies;
periodic testing and verification that backed up data and systems are operational and accessible; and
a data backup policy that addresses ransomware situations.