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Tape backup as a defense vs. ransomware

Tape is definitely not the best choice for primary recovery, but it does have features that make it a credible option for restoring systems and data that have fallen victim to ransomware without having to pay the ransom.

The cloud has many more upsides than tape as a recovery tool in general, but there are circumstances where tape should be seriously considerd, and ransomware recovery is one of them.

When cloud’s not good enough
Using the cloud for ransomware recovery—or not—has become somewhat of a religious discussion in many circles. Choosing the cloud offers many positive things, including cost, speed, and immediate availability—all great advantages when responding to a ransomware attack.

But perhaps you work in an industry that does not yet trust the cloud. Some companies, and especially some governmental entities, really frown on relinquishing physical control over their data. They want a copy in their hands that they can manage both electronically and physically. They what to be able to put it in a box or cage that they can see and know that it is physically protected. They can’t see the cloud, so they regard it as unsafe.

Other organizations are fine with using the cloud for some applications but just don’t think of it as suitable for data protection.

The risk of disk
“If it’s on disk it’s at risk” was the marketing slogan for a tape company years ago. Perhaps that was in response to a disk vendor’s “Tape sucks, move on” campaign, but there was also some truth to the disk and risk claim.

If your backups are sitting on a disk drive in your data center that is accessible as a file system from the operating system of your backup server, it can indeed be attacked by the same ransomware you’re trying to defend against. NetworkWorld

 

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