Ransomware Mitigation with SafeMode Snapshots

Unfortunately ransomware is everywhere today. In short, the attacker encrypts your organisation's data and then sells you the encryption key to recover it. The fate of your data lies in the hands of an invisible person that promises you if you pay, you can have your data back. This doesn’t exactly instill confidence. And sometimes, you pay, and you still can’t get your data back!

As a storage company, we feel it’s our responsibility to deliver a solution to help if this happens to you. So, we put our heads together and came up with a way to mitigate the aftermath of a ransomware attack that puts the control back into your hands. 

We can’t prevent the attack from happening, but we can help mitigate the impact and get you up and running quickly with our SafeMode™ feature enabled.

SafeMode is essentially an immutable snapshot used to protect your data. The best part is, ransomware can’t delete, modify, or encrypt it! In order to understand “how” we mitigate the impact with SafeMode, we need to quickly discuss the typical sequence of events that occur during a ransomware attack.

1. The intruder gains access to a server or storage device. 
2. The intruder starts encrypting your data. 
3. The application crashes and operations go offline until you pay the ransom.
4. The ransom is paid, and you can restart the application with access to the unencrypted data (maybe).

How would this event be different if you were protected by SafeMode snapshots? 

The intruder can still gain access and encrypt your data. But when it comes to deleting SafeMode snapshots, they can’t because they’re locked and protected.

Your operations are either not impacted or only minimally interrupted. And no ransom needs to be paid. In other words, you have control over your data, instead of the intruder.

SafeMode is also easy to set up and maintain. We provide a cloud-based tool called Pure1® that can assess your environment's vulnerability. We show you where you have exposure points and give you the steps to take to remediate weaknesses, so you’re armed and ready.

What makes this even better? SafeMode functionality is built into our products. No complicated setup, no professional services engagement, no compromises.