A Blog Series - Part 3: Cyber Attack Monitoring, Detection, Analytics, and Remediation for Backup
In this blog series, we’ve been talking about all the factors that go into making sure your backup environment stays locked down and protected from hackers. We’ve already covered considerations for backup environment access and backup data security, along with how you can assess your own situation. But this series wouldn’t be complete without addressing monitoring for cyber vulnerabilities in the backup environment, analyzing the data, and adjusting things to prevent disaster.
Why Does This matter?
Monitoring, detection, and analysis of the backup environment are critical to safeguarding backup data against malicious threats, such as ransomware, data breaches, and insider threats. These actions ensure timely identification of potential attacks, enable rapid response, preserve backup integrity, and support compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. Without these practices, backup systems can become vulnerable points in the broader cyber security defense strategy.
These practices accomplish several important things ...
Early detection: Monitoring regularly and using advanced detection tools in your backup systems make it possible to spot unusual activities or potential vulnerabilities. Early identification of malicious behaviors, such as unauthorized access or abnormal modification of backup files, can lead to faster responses and minimize the impact of attacks. For instance, detecting unusual patterns, like a sudden spike in backup requests or unauthorized access attempts, can help prevent attackers from encrypting or deleting backup data. Having real-time monitoring data allows security teams to take immediate action, such as isolating infected systems or restoring clean backups.
Forensic analysis: In case of an attack, the ability to perform thorough analysis on the backup environment helps forensic investigators determine the nature, scope, and origin of the compromise. By analyzing logs, backup metadata, and system behavior, you can understand how an attacker infiltrated the environment and whether the attack affected backup data integrity. This analysis also aids in refining future defense strategies.
Protecting backup integrity: Backup systems are a primary target for attackers who aim to disrupt recovery efforts. Without cyber protection, monitoring, and detection mechanisms, attackers could modify or delete backups without detection, rendering the recovery process ineffective. Immutability, along with real-time monitoring, maintains data integrity by ensuring that no one can tamper with your backups. It can also prevent attackers from entering other parts of the network through compromised backup systems.
Compliance and audit trails: Regular monitoring and analysis of backup systems are vital for ensuring compliance with data protection regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA. These regulations require organizations to maintain secure and unaltered backup data. Monitoring tools provide an audit trail that can prove compliance and demonstrate that data was properly secured, stored, and protected from cyber threats.
Without properly monitoring and remediating the backup environment, things can go horribly wrong.
For example, a cyber attack on backup systems occurred in 2024 due to unpatched software involving a Veeam Backup & Replication vulnerability. This vulnerability, which Veeam initially disclosed and patched in March 2023, allowed attackers to extract sensitive credentials stored in the system's configuration database. Despite the availability of a patch, many organizations had not updated their systems.
Ransomware groups like Akira and EstateRansomware exploited this unpatched vulnerability. Attackers used it to gain unauthorized access, create rogue accounts, perform reconnaissance on Active Directory, and ultimately exfiltrate data from backup systems.
This incident highlights the risks of failing to promptly address vulnerabilities in critical backup infrastructure — which can result in both data theft and potential disruption of recovery processes. The right monitoring and remediation practices could have prevented those attacks.
Assessing Your Own Backup Monitoring and Remediation Efforts
If your organization’s data ever becomes compromised, you’ll have to rely on backups to restore it. And if your backup data isn’t secure, then you have nothing to fall back on. Asking the right questions will help you identify pitfalls in your own backup environment and decide if you need to beef up your security practices. For instance:
- Does your backup product automatically update itself and the infrastructure it uses with new security patches to your OS, backup software, backup catalog, and storage devices?
- Can your backup product identify potentially infected systems and files?
- Does your backup product provide cyber-attack event impact analysis?
For more questions related to monitoring, analysis, and remediation, you can download our free assessment questionnaire.
Addressing Security Gaps and Mitigating Your Risk
Having the right backup product makes all the difference. If you do a candid self-assessment and find security gaps that need filling, then you need Cobalt Iron Compass.
Compass makes the entire backup process simple, secure, automated, and smarter thanks to these and many other automated features:
- Cyber-attack detection: Automatically identifies threat conditions.
- Security analytics: Analyzes metrics, events, conditions, and configurations to find vulnerabilities and assess impact.
- Automated software updates: Ensures you never miss patches or other important updates.
- Built-in data governance: Automatically manages data throughout its life cycle.
- Zero Access® architecture: Eliminates unnecessary human interaction — and thus, malintent — with backup componentry and operations.
- Calculated optimal recovery point: Compass calculates and suggests optimal recovery points for infected data, allowing you to roll back to safe data versions from just before the incident occurred.
Fortifying Your Data Protection Strategy
Interested in learning more about securing your backup environment? Download the Backup Environment Security Vulnerability Questionnaire to assess your current posture and discover steps you can take to achieve more robust protection. Or, get in touch to schedule a free backup security consultation with experts from Cobalt Iron.
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