Safeguarding Your Data with StorONE: A Comprehensive Approach to Ransomware Protection

The “Storage and Data Protection Trends and Innovations to Watch in 2025”[i] report emphasizes the importance of immutable backups as a key strategy to protect against ransomware. The threat of data breaches, particularly from ransomware, has become a significant concern for organizations across the globe. StorONE offers a suite of technologies designed to enhance data security and ensure efficient recovery in the event of a cyber incident. Here’s a detailed look at how StorONE’s features work together to protect against ransomware:

Immutable Snapshots: Ensuring Data Integrity

StorONE uses the concept of immutable snapshots, which are backups that cannot be changed or deleted once created. This feature is vital for ransomware defense as it ensures that backup data remains intact, providing a reliable recovery source even if the primary data is compromised. StorONE’s “always-on immutable snapshots” are akin to having an unchangeable ledger of your data. Once a snapshot is taken, it cannot be altered or deleted by any means, including ransomware. This means that even if your primary data falls victim to encryption by ransomware, your snapshots remain untouched, providing a clean, recoverable version of your data.

Granular Recovery Points: Minimizing Data Loss

With the capability to maintain numerous snapshots, StorONE allows for a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) as low as 60 seconds. StorONE allows the creation of numerous snapshots (over 500,000 per container) to capture point-in-time data copies at regular intervals. This means organizations can recover data from a point just before an attack, significantly reducing data loss. This level of granularity enables businesses to choose the most appropriate data version for restoration, thereby minimizing downtime. Imagine being able to rewind time to any minute before an attack; you’re never more than a minute away from a safe restore point, drastically reducing potential data loss.

Immutability Schedule

StorONE also allows for tiered snapshot schedules (Grandfather, Father, Son) to facilitate the management of snapshots for long-term retention and protection. StorONE uses a calendar-type interface for snapshots and allows for filtering of specific applications or volumes to make the retrieval of a snapshot easy. StorONE recovers a snapshot by first taking a new snapshot of the existing one and then presenting that as a read/write volume. This allows for multiple snapshots to be mounted from anywhere along the snapshot chain to facilitate forensic activity in the case of a ransomware attack. For example:

• Tier 1 (Most Frequent): Captures snapshots every few minutes for short-term recovery needs. (Can be as frequent as every 60 seconds)
• Tier 2 (Less Frequent): Takes snapshots hourly or daily for operational recovery points.
• Tier 3 (Least Frequent): Creates snapshots weekly or monthly for long-term archival and compliance requirements.
  
  

Two-Tier Storage: Maximizing Performance, Controlling Cost

For a typical backup workload, StorONE will utilize its Optimized Data Placement (Tiering 2.0) technology to provide for rapid incremental backups to a tier of SSD and then allow that data to efficiently move down to a lower tier of either HDDs or high-capacity SSD for long-term retention. The tiers are adjustable and based on system resources can be tuned to retain current backup data in the upper tier. In addition, with StorONE’s Virtual Storage Containers, backup volumes can be created for different classes of backups. Some go to two-tier SSD volumes for rapid recovery, and others go to SSD/HDD hybrid volumes for greater storage cost efficiency. This ability to provide tiered storage also allows for longer snapshot protection schedules in a cost-efficient manner.

Replication for Data Isolation

StorONE supports sync, async, and semi-sync replication that provides for additional data isolation from ransomware attacks. Data can even be replicated across storage types, such as from SSD to a hybrid volume. Data can also be replicated to a StorONE instance running in the public cloud for additional protection or analysis.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for Snapshots: Enhanced Access Control

StorONE enhances security by requiring Multi-Factor Authentication for managing snapshot configurations and initiating recoveries. This additional layer of security ensures that only authorized individuals can access or modify these critical backups, reducing the risk of unauthorized changes. This means that even if cybercriminals obtain login credentials, they’re still barred from altering or deleting snapshots without the additional authentication factors, thereby safeguarding your recovery options.

Multi-Admin Approval for Snapshot Operations: Collaborative Security

To prevent unauthorized or accidental modifications, StorONE implements a policy where multiple administrators must approve any changes or deletions to snapshots and their schedules. This would prevent malicious actors, even if they compromise a single admin account, from easily deleting critical backups. This collaborative approach adds a layer of security, ensuring that critical decisions are not made unilaterally. This protection also prevents accidental or malicious volume deletion. The snapshot schedule is also protected against changes in system time or NTP attacks by internal StorONE mechanisms. If an unauthorized change is made, the system immediately sends an alert. Additionally, the system uses this knowledge to prevent the early expiration of volume snapshots.

Anomaly Detection: Proactive Monitoring

StorONE incorporates anomaly detection to monitor data activities for unusual patterns, such as unexpected increases in write operations, which might indicate a ransomware attack. Early detection allows for timely intervention, potentially mitigating the impact of an attack. These notifications can be provided to system administrators via various channels including email, Seq, Slack, SNMP, Syslog, and StorONE support.

Electronically Air-Gapped Snapshots: Logical Isolation

Utilizing electronic air-gapping, StorONE ensures that snapshots are logically isolated from the primary data environment. This separation means that even if the primary system is compromised, the snapshots remain secure, providing a safe recovery point ensuring you have a secure, isolated copy of your data.

Protection of System Configuration

StorONE can present volumes on its SSD tier that are tuned for databases and protected by immutable snapshots. These volumes can be used to host the backup server’s metadata, index catalogs, dedupe databases etc. protecting them from ransomware attacks.

Encrypting data at rest

All StorONE systems utilize SED drives at both the SSD and HDD tiers.

Standby Storage

StorONE systems can present SSD volumes that can act as recovery targets. This enables organizations to have a pristine environment to recover data into so that they can continue operations from the StorONE storage while the production environment is being repaired or examined. These could be Virtual machine volumes, database volumes etc. and could be mounted by a Hypervisor or Database as required over any protocol.

Conclusion: A Comprehensive Defense Strategy

By integrating these features, StorONE provides a layered approach to data protection against ransomware. The combination of immutable backups, detailed recovery options, strict access controls, standby storage, encrypted drives and proactive monitoring not only protects data but also enhances an organization’s resilience against cyber threats. StorONE’s strategy is comprehensive, offering businesses a robust framework for data security in an era where digital threats are ever-present. With StorONE, data protection is not just about backups; it’s about creating a secure environment where data can be confidently stored and swiftly recovered when needed.

[i] https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2024/09/05/storage-and-data-protection-trends-and-innovations-to-watch-in-2025/