Ransomware remains a major threat to businesses, especially SMBs. Just a single successful ransomware attack can be devastating.
Managed service providers (MSPs) should be able to offer their clients a comprehensive set of tools to defend against ransomware. These tools can include endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and traffic monitoring. But do you know what the most reliable protection against ransomware actually is? A solid backup and disaster recovery (DR) plan.
Why SMBs (and providers) need a disaster recovery plan
Unfortunately, many businesses don’t realize how important their data integrity is until it has been compromised. Public, private, and hybrid clouds may be effective platforms for running business IT, but they’re not immune to ransomware attacks. In fact, security firm Sophos in their State of Ransomware 2020 report, found that 59% of all successful ransomware attacks were carried out against cloud data.
Implementing a disaster recovery solution for your clients allows you to quickly restore system functionality and data in the event that a ransomware attack is successful. DR tools are of course equally effective at restoring service in the event of a natural disaster, major hardware failure and other crises.
MSPs need to defend against ransomware attacks on their own cloud infrastructure too. As much as we like to think we won’t succumb to social engineering attacks, we’re not immune either. The elevated permissions MSPs hold over their clients’ tenants can increase the risk of a ransomware attack propagating quickly should their accounts become compromised. We need to react quickly should our own systems be compromised as well!
Backing up data is critical
Despite being a constant and predictable IT security threat for years now, the remediation costs for ransomware attacks remain high. That same Sophos report identified the average cost for a US-based business to remediate a ransomware attack as $732,520. The average remediation cost nearly doubled to $1,448,458 among businesses who were forced to pay the ransom because they lacked proper backups.
Those are just the direct costs! There are also many intangible costs that can arise from a ransomware attack:
Lost productivity
Work slows down while data is locked behind ransomware encryption. The longer the attack goes on, the more and more lost revenue a client’s business could see.
Lost customers
Customers might see it as a breach of trust (and rightly so!) if their own data in your client’s possession is lost or damaged in a ransomware attack. They will likely want to take their business elsewhere.
Reputational damage
Word of a ransomware attack against your client will eventually make its way to their peers, competitors and the media as well. They may even be required to disclose the attack, depending on what regulatory standards they work under. That can harm their reputation and steer future business opportunities towards their competitors.
Protect your clients & increase MRR by offering disaster recovery services
Ransomware attacks, natural disasters and hardware failures can’t be predicted—all you can do is plan for them. MSPs can defend against ransomware attacks and other threats by offering backup and disaster recovery solutions.
Not only are DR services your best defense against ransomware attacks, but they also offer an easy way to increase your monthly recurring revenue (MRR). They’re a win-win solution for Sherweb partners and their customers.
Cloud-based Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions are easy to spin up for clients of any size. Two of the most reliable DRaaS solutions on the market are Veeam and Acronis. Sherweb offers both!
What is Veeam?
Veeam Cloud Connect is a cloud-based DRaaS solution. It was specifically designed to support the backup, replication, and restoration of cloud-based VMs, but it is very capable of doing the same for physical servers and virtualized resources in your client’s data center.
Veeam is managed through its own Veeam Availability Suite dashboard. It is compatible with all major hypervisors, including vSphere and Hyper-V, and is compatible with all major cloud environments.
Veeam supports hot, warm, and cold restoration options, which you can assign to each individual resource depending on how mission-critical each is to your client’s operations. Veeam can run with or without an agent. Hot replicated servers can be restored in a matter of minutes. Warm and cold backups can be restored to production in less than a day.
What is Acronis?
Acronis Online Backup is a versatile and easy-to-use DR solution. It performs agentless backups of your cloud apps, including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace apps. It is also able to back up both virtual and on-site servers, and endpoint devices. Acronis is compatible with all major cloud platforms.
Acronis allows you to easily back up data to off-site cloud storage. It offers rapid retrieval, even in the case of file deletion. It offers multi-level encryption for backups when you need to meet regulatory standards for data security, or when your client’s just need that added level of protection.
It helps you protect your clients not only with its backup and recovery features but also with comprehensive data integrity and threat analytics.
Protect against ransomware while you grow your business
No threat detection system is fool-proof. That makes backup DR solutions like Veeam and Acronis the best possible ways to defend against ransomware attacks that might compromise your clients’ systems and data. Rather than pay millions in ransoms, your clients just need to wait a few minutes for you to restore their servers to production. Adding another channel of reliable MRR to your MSP business isn’t such a bad thing either!
