How to protect your SMB from ransomware

Why do cybercriminals attack SMBs?

The common belief among cybercriminals appears to be that small and mid-sized businesses are less capable of protecting themselves from ransomware than large corporations or government agencies. While the payout might be smaller, they are easier prey, with only 14% of targeted SMBs equipped to handle cyberattacks. This is why SMBs make up nearly 43% of cybercriminal targets. Three in four SMBs would grind to a halt if hit with ransomware, making them extremely likely to pay out rather than risk permanent closure.

How Kingston IronKey can help

Kingston IronKey offers an alternative to flinging small fortunes in Bitcoin at cybercriminals in the vague hope of reciprocity. Using an external encrypted SSD like the Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD as a backup ensures that there are terabytes of firmly gated, air-gapped data that cybercriminals cannot access. Air-gapped backups ensure that your data is not connected to the Internet.

You can use the backup drive to revert your primary system to a point before the ransomware was installed. As the VP80ES is FIPS 197 certified with XTS-AES 256-bit hardware encryption, it is near impossible for a hacker to break the encryption on the drive. This means it makes a better backup than cloud solutions, as it is more secure. Cloud backups can be affected by breaches as well, and a cloud breach sometimes results in the cloud service being inaccessible while the cloud server security issues are addressed, resulting in potential delays in accessing critical backup data when needed.

Of course, when it comes to data security, redundancy is important. The best practice is to use the 3-2-1 strategy recommended by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The 3-2-1 strategy is as follows:

• Keep three copies of the data – the original as well as two copies
• Use different drives and do not store multiple backups on just one drive
• Keep one copy offsite so you have options in the event of a disaster (such as flooding, hurricanes or blizzards) that destroys one or both of your active backup drives or renders them inaccessible.

An addition to the 3-2-1 strategy for flash-based storage is to ensure that all backups are refreshed no less than once per year, so backup drives do not develop issues that are not detected until too late, resulting in data loss.

How to implement the 3-2-1 strategy

With the 3-2-1 strategy, back up your system onto 3 VP80ES units in the first instance. Then, store one VP80ES offsite. Then, periodically (daily/weekly), alternate between the two drives to back up your system.

Then, weekly, or as needed, swap one of the two active backup drives with the offsite one and back up your computer on the offsite drive, which is now part of your regular backup set.

Continue this swapping of one of the regular backup drives with the offsite backup drive on a regular basis, so that if the two normal backup drives are lost or unusable, the offsite backup drive is available and will reduce your data loss impact without materially affecting your business.

With your SMB’s vital data protected by an encrypted drive (or preferably multiple encrypted drives in different locations), you will restore your systems to a pre-ransomware state in the event of a disaster. As well as minimising your company’s downtime, you will also signal to bad actors that your SMB is inoculated against cybercrime, making it less likely that you will be targeted again. Only 17% of small businesses encrypt their data, but by doing so, you are making yourself much less of a target. The average amount that a business saves through robust encryption and well-enforced cybersecurity measures is $1.4 million – not in total, but per attack.

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