The Fort Knox of Data: Ransomware Resilience and Exfiltration Prevention

Think of today’s cyber criminals as thieves who want to not only lock you out of your bank vault but also auction off your assets to the highest bidder. This double-extortion tactic – encrypting data and threatening to leak it – has become increasingly common with the hackers behind major attacks like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack.

In this blog post for CISA’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we explore why traditional encryption tools aren’t enough to protect your bank vault against ransomware attacks. We also discuss two critical components of the fight against ransomware: data resilience and exfiltration prevention.

Breaking into the vault: why traditional methods fall short

Encryption remains one of the best defenses against ransomware, but traditional encryption methods no longer cut it.

Think of it like putting a stronger lock on your vault door. While useful, it doesn’t address the core issue: If the bank vault is breached, your data is still vulnerable. And once cybercriminals get past that initial barrier, all your valuable assets are in one place.

That’s especially true with the rise of harvest now, decrypt later attacks. With the advent of quantum computing on the horizon, cybercriminals are stealing data that they can’t decrypt today, and betting that they’ll have the computing power they need in the future. It’s like having a time bomb in your vault: You don’t know when it will detonate, but it will blow the door off when it does.

Another critical shortcoming of traditional encryption is the loss of data and system availability. During a ransomware attack, critical systems become inaccessible, bringing operations to a halt. Traditional encryption does little to prevent this scenario or maintain availability.

These limitations highlight why we need to think beyond just “locking the door” when it comes to data security. Modern data protection strategies need to address not only the confidentiality of data but also its integrity and availability in the face of sophisticated attacks.

Ransomware and data resilience: staying operational in the face of attacks

In the context of ransomware, data resilience is the ability to maintain data availability and integrity during and after an attack. It’s about ensuring that your critical information and systems remain accessible and functional without paying a ransom or suffering extended downtime.

Data resilience is especially crucial because traditional backup strategies are no longer sufficient. Ransomware variants have evolved to target backup systems in an estimated 94% of attacks, leaving organizations vulnerable even when they think they’re protected.

Key elements of robust data resilience may include:

High availability
Data integrity checks
Immutable storage
Air-gapped backups
Rapid recovery capabilities
Data dispersion across multiple storage locations
And more

Ultimately, data resilience has become not just a technical safeguard but a crucial business strategy. Organizations that prioritize resilience are keeping the gold in their bank vaults intact and accessible – and leaving the digital thieves empty-handed.

Data exfiltration and double extortion ransomware attacks

Double extortion ransomware, perpetrated by gangs like REvil and DarkSide, is a growing threat. In 2023 alone, double extortion attacks increased 72% quarter over quarter.

In this type of ransomware attack, cybercriminals don’t just encrypt their victims’ data; they also exfiltrate it. They then threaten to expose that exfiltrated data on the internet (often on the dark web) as blackmail, giving them additional leverage in their ransom demands.

This evolving tactic presents a significant challenge for organizations, as traditional ransomware protection measures often focus solely on preventing data encryption or ensuring rapid recovery. With double extortion, even if a company can restore its data from backups, it still faces the risk of sensitive information being leaked — which can have cascading consequences like reputational damage, legal consequences, and regulatory fines.

ShardSecure’s agentless data security

To understand our agentless approach in our patented microsharding platform, imagine the gold in Fort Knox being broken into thousands of tiny nuggets and scattered across thousands of secure locations. Our Microshard technology works similarly, by:

Shredding data into tiny fragments that are too small to contain even a birthdate, ID number, or other complete piece of sensitive data.
Mixing in poison data (i.e. fool’s gold).
Distributing data across multiple storage locations in on-prem, cloud, or multi-cloud environments.

Microsharding offers two critical advantages in the fight against ransomware:

Data resilience: Even if attackers manage to breach one location, they will only find data shards of no value. It’s like a thief breaking into Fort Knox only to find a handful of gold dust.
Exfiltration prevention: If cyber criminals can’t reassemble your data, they can’t threaten to leak it. Microsharding makes data unintelligible to unauthorized users, mitigating the risk of double extortion ransomware attacks.

Conclusion

Ultimately, ransomware protection is not just about building higher walls or stronger vault doors for your Fort Knox of data. It’s about making the data inside those walls impossible to steal or exploit in the first place. With robust data resilience and data exfiltration prevention, agencies and organizations can keep their data secure in the face of ransomware and other threats.

As cyber threats continue to evolve, so must our defenses. By adopting new approaches like microsharding, organizations can build a robust protection strategy against ransomware and stay one step ahead of cyber criminals. The teams at Carahsoft and ShardSecure are at the forefront of this shift, specializing in providing federal, state, and local government agencies with cutting-edge solutions to secure their cyber ecosystems.

As we observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month, now is the perfect time to reexamine your security plans and ensure you're staying ahead of evolving threats. Take a look at our resources to learn how ShardSecure can help.