Cyber Resilience: Protecting Your Data From Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware has a fondness for state and local government. Even when the total number of ransomware attacks declines, state and local entities pay cybercriminals disproportionately large sums to maintain the critical infrastructure and operations upon which communities depend. Agencies may be clear-eyed about the threat but they struggle to conquer it, constrained by budget cuts and supply chain risk largely beyond their control. And AI is a two-fold hazard: It gives bad actors more sophisticated tools and creates internal risk.

Still, paying cybercriminals isn’t the solution it seems: They often are better at encrypting then decrypting, so there’s no guarantee that your data will return safely. Cyber resilience, however, can prevent the data from leaving your agency in the first place. The strategy includes using immutable backups — which adversaries cannot delete, no matter how hard they try — and abiding by zero-trust principles. It also means patching vulnerabilities much faster than protocols allow.

“AI is making exploits of vulnerabilities much, much faster than it used to be. So do the old-school things right, but also be aware that AI is changing the landscape under our feet very, very rapidly,” said Jeff Reichard, Vice President Solutions Strategy at Veeam.

In this video interview, Reichard discusses how a proactive, resilient cyber strategy can protect state and local agencies from their evolving threat landscape. Topics include:  

• How ransomware uniquely impacts state and local entities
• Specific ways to become cyber resilient and protect data
• Case studies that show the consequences of cyber-related data loss