Cyberpandemic Prevention: Align Enterprise Storage With Cybersecurity Strategic Plan

What if the next pandemic that grips the world and causes widespread disruption to life as we know it is not because of an infectious disease but rather is the result of a “cyberpandemic”?

As we observe the month of October as cybersecurity awareness month, the possibility of a cyberpandemic is on people’s minds.

The word “pandemic” means “widespread occurrence” affecting a country or the whole world. Many argue that the world is already experiencing the early stages of a cyberpandemic based on the number and severity of cyberattacks hitting government, utilities, healthcare institutions, universities and private industry. In particular, ransomware and other forms of malware attacks, targeted at everything from critical infrastructure to all types of enterprises, are reportedly on the rise.

The concern is not that far-fetched. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) continue to issue advisories about the escalation and increasing sophistication of cyberattacks, including highly advanced “Blacksuit” ransomware attacks that make conventional ransomware attacks look like child’s play.

No enterprise is immune from being attacked by cybercriminals. The issue is not if but when. So, the natural question is: What do we do about it? Attention needs to be paid to how to prevent or reverse a cyberpandemic.

CISA posted the following statement on its website about how none of us in the IT community can stand on the sidelines when it comes to the preparedness and responsiveness needed to avert a large-scale cyberpandemic:

“Cybersecurity is a shared journey and a shared challenge that the entire nation must address together. As America’s Cyber Defense Agency, CISA serves a foundational role in the global cybersecurity community, but true and lasting security in cyberspace can only be achieved collaboratively. Government at all levels, industry, technology providers, the global community of cyber defenders, individual citizens, and others must all work together to achieve a secure cyber future.”

One of the strategies that enterprises can take to achieve this “secure cyber future” is to align with CISA’s Cybersecurity Strategic Plan. It provides a blueprint that not only applies to governmental agencies and departments but also enables enterprises to focus on the right things in light of the onslaught of cyberattacks.

The first goal of CISA’s Strategic Plan is to “address immediate threats” by preventing cyber criminals from achieving their objectives to cause havoc and/or steal information and money. A way to do that in the enterprise (or commercial company) is to incorporate automated cyber protection into your security operations center (SOC) and integrate storage with cybersecurity monitoring capabilities.

When the first sign of a cyberattack happens, a trigger automatically causes immutable snapshots to be taken of your organization’s data. Automated cyber protection invariably reduces the threat window significantly. Therefore, even if a cybercriminal takes your company’s data ransom, you can minimize or nullify it because you can rapidly revert back to your own known clean copy of data.

The second goal is to “harden the terrain” by applying best practices in cyber resilience and overall cybersecurity. An effective way to “reduce the likelihood of damaging intrusions” is to utilize cyber detection built into primary storage infrastructure, as well as immutable snapshots, logical air gapping, fenced forensic environments and near-instantaneous cyber recovery.

When your company has all of these dimensions of cyber resilience, you have hardened your data infrastructure to the nth degree. The “harmful intrusions” of hackers and other nefarious cyber players get neutralized. You don’t even have to return the phone call or online message when the cybercriminals come calling for their ransom to release your data that was taken hostage. You can tell them to pound the equivalent of cyber sand. You’re a CIO, CISO or a storage admin, and you’ve got your swagger back to push back on these ominous cyberattacks.

The third goal is to “drive security at scale” by building security into the products that are used and to make cybersecurity a top priority at the C-suite level. One of the major advancements in enterprise storage over the past couple of years is the integration of cybersecurity functionality into primary and secondary storage. If you don’t have security built into the storage arrays that you use, then you are leaving open a vulnerability vector that cybercriminals can exploit—to your detriment.

As technology solution providers and enterprises, we can learn much from CISA, America’s cyber defense agency, which invites enterprises to be part of “a shared journey” and “a shared challenge”:

“We must be clear-eyed about the future we seek, one in which damaging cyber intrusions are a shocking anomaly, in which organizations are secure and resilient, in which technology products are safe and secure by design and default. ... Even as we confront the challenge of unsafe technology products, we must ensure that the future is more secure than the present — including by looking ahead to reduce the risks and fully leverage the benefits posed by artificial intelligence.”

From the use of AI/ML in cyber detection capabilities now integrated into primary storage solutions to the deployment of AI in IT operations (AIOps), the tools that are available to secure an enterprise’s storage infrastructure and provide a transparent, streamlined view into it contribute to the “clear-eyed” future.

There is also a growing realization among IT teams that legacy storage arrays do not have these advanced cyber-resilient capabilities. Indeed, “unsafe” data infrastructures are no longer acceptable because they leave the door open for cyber thieves to plunder and pillage online, like cyber pirates.

Cyber storage resilience has now emerged as tablestakes for enterprise data infrastructure. This is a crucial way to address, harden and drive security in storage infrastructure that ensures, to use CISA’s words, “the future is more secure than the present.” As all enterprises embrace cyber resilience and recovery, along with government, educational institutions, public utilities and critical infrastructure, this is what will enable our world to avert a full-blown cyberpandemic.

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