Ransomware Response Playbook Using Active Backup Suite

How to Make a Ransomware Response Playbook That Works

Ransomware has changed from being a type of malware that takes advantage of opportunities to a very specific business threat. Modern attacks happen quickly, turn off backups, and take advantage of holes in recovery plans. Most of the time, organizations that recover well don’t make things up as they go along. They use a written ransomware response playbook that spells out how to find, contain, restore, and harden systems after an attack.

A good response playbook focuses on keeping downtime to a minimum, protecting clean recovery points, and getting operations back up and running without paying ransoms. Backup infrastructure is important at every step of this process.

Phase One: Getting Ready for an Event

Before an attack happens, you should start getting ready for ransomware. Organizations need to make sure that all of their important systems are backed up on a regular basis. This includes endpoints, servers, virtual machines, and SaaS platforms. The frequency of backups should depend on how risky the business is, not how easy it is.

It is just as important to keep backups safe from being hacked. Backup systems should have separate credentials, limited access, and policies that keep data from being accidentally or maliciously overwritten. Even if you make backups often, they might not work during an incident if you don’t have this foundation.

Testing restores is also part of getting ready. When recovery processes haven’t been tested before, they often fail under pressure, which leads to more downtime and uncertainty.

Phase Two: Finding and Stopping

When ransomware is found, speed is more important than getting it right. The first goal is to keep it from spreading. To stop lateral movement, systems that are affected must be cut off from the network. Continuing normal operations during an active attack often makes things worse.

You should check backup operations right away. When encrypted data starts to overwrite clean backup copies, the options for recovery quickly get smaller. You may need to stop backup jobs for a short time until you know more about the attack timeline.

At this point, it’s very important to be able to see clearly how healthy your backups are and what versions they have.

Step Three: Assessing the Effects

Not all systems are usually hacked at the same time. A careful evaluation finds out which workloads were affected and when the attack started. Restoring data from after the initial breach could lead to reinfection.

You can find the last known clean recovery point by looking at backup timestamps and change patterns. This step stops you from restoring data that has been compromised and stops the same thing from happening again.

Granular inspection is very important for cloud-based platforms like Microsoft 365. Different ways of recovering may be needed for email, files, and user accounts.

Phase Four: Restoration and Recovery

Restoration starts once clean recovery points have been found. Choose recovery methods based on how urgent and wide-ranging they are. For critical servers, a full system restore may be needed, but for servers with only a little damage, a file-level restore may be enough.

Instant recovery options that cut down on downtime are good for virtualized environments. To avoid rolling back data that doesn’t need to be, SaaS platforms often need granular restoration.

During this phase, restored systems should stay separate from each other until they are proven to be clean.

How Synology Active Backup Suite Helps with Ransomware Response

Without needing separate licenses for each workload, Synology Active Backup Suite lets you protect endpoints, servers, virtual machines, and SaaS workloads all in one place. This helps cover more ground and get rid of blind spots.

Its versioned backups let teams see how things have changed over time and find clean recovery points quickly. Bare-metal recovery lets you restore a whole system to new hardware, and instant VM recovery cuts down on downtime. Granular recovery for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace lets you restore data exactly without affecting other data that isn’t affected.

Step 5: Check and strengthen

When systems come back online, recovery isn’t over. It is important to check that restored systems are working and are safe. You should carefully look over logs, restore reports, and access activity.

Hardening after an incident is very important. Resetting credentials, patching, reviewing access controls, and updating backup policies all make it less likely that attacks will happen again. After dealing with ransomware directly, many businesses also make immutability and off-site replication stronger.

Why a Playbook Is Important

Companies that bounce back quickly do so because they plan ahead. A ransomware response playbook takes the guesswork out of the situation, calms people down, and lets IT, security, and leadership teams work together.

Backups only work if they are safe, easy to see, and can be restored under stress.

About the Epis Technology

Epis Technology helps businesses use Synology Active Backup Suite to create, set up, and run backup and recovery systems that can withstand ransomware attacks. They offer services like making backup plans, setting up Synology, making security stronger, and testing recovery.

Epis Technology helps businesses move from reactive recovery to proactive cyber resilience by making sure that backups are always usable when they are needed most. This is done by aligning technology with documented response procedures.