WannaCry infected over 230,000 computers in over 100 countries. The victims of the attack included notable organizations such as FedEx and National Health Service, and they were asked to pay certain amounts in bitcoin before their data can be decrypted.

Ransomware attacks like these have educated us on how important enterprises need to protect themselves and their clients.

An Ounce of Prevention and a Good Backup

Remember, March 31st is World Backup Day.

One area where CIOs have placed importance is the security of their software, and there are various innovative solutions that are powered by Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to address the prevention of data breaches. Although there are a lot of available solutions, enterprises need to have it at the back of their mind that there is no guaranteed prevention solution based on Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, or firewall technologies. Instead, CIOs need to understand that prevention is only a piece of the overall protection strategy.

While the strategies and the danger posed by data breaches are evaluated by CIOs and IT/System Administrators, they can take steps to make sure that they are protected against any attack through insurance. This strategy of ensuring their data is well understood, worthwhile and likely well-practiced within their existing organization.

What this insurance strategy means is the backing up of your data, which can also be called data protection. This data protection strategy does not necessarily mean an organization can prevent any attack, but it enables them to destroy all data affected, then recover all data from the backup before the data was infected. Most organizations, but unfortunately not all affected by the wannacry ransomware were able to restore their data by leveraging their backup copies and patch up their security to avoid future ransom attacks.

The Role of the Cloud

Multi-cloud infrastructure and next-generation cloud applications have risen rapidly in recent years and it adds an additional layer of complexity to data protection. Most CIOs held a common belief that their data is safe in the cloud. This is not far from the truth. When considering a comprehensive data protection strategy, you need to take the factors into account.

• You need to protect your application data even if the data is spread across multiple data centers.

• You need to protect your application data for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments.

• You also need to protect next generation applications built on database platforms that are highly distributed, eventually, and consistent.

The cloud is not immune to ransomware attacks, so organizations need to be more vigilant than ever to ensure they are protected not just within their data center, but everywhere their data resides, and that means the cloud!

Organizations need to be more vigilant than ever because the cloud is not immune to ransomware attacks. They should ensure that their data are protected not in a data center, but everywhere their data resides. A comprehensive strategy and plan for data protection will give you no reason to ever experience any data breach.