Prepare to Recover from Zero-Day Attacks before they Hit your PCs, Servers

Acronis®, Inc. (https://www.acronis.com), a provider of affordable, scalable storage management and disaster recovery software,

is urging IT managers to merge their security policies with their backup and recovery procedures in the wake of the increasing threat of zero-day attacks.

As hackers get smarter, the strength of threats such as zero-day attacks (essentially when unknown or unpatched vulnerability is exploited in the window between a vendor identifying a virus and when the vendor patch is issued) means that security vendors are struggling to offer adequate protection to companies meaning business critical applications, such as ERP and database servers, are vulnerable to downtime.

The speed and complexity of such threats means that the parameters of security are shifting outside of its traditional realm. As such, Acronis is strongly advising companies to consider how they backup and recover their files, operating systems and applications in tandem with their security policies. In essence, companies need to have the ability to roll back to an uninfected state to guarantee security even when anti-virus systems are defeated, malware finds its way on to PCs or servers, or other systems are otherwise compromised.

"Many IT managers presume that their chosen security vendor will protect their systems against all threats, but unfortunately, by the time antivirus and security companies provide a patch for a security breach, it is often too late," said Jason Donahue, CEO of Acronis. "If they are affected by a zero-day attack, IT managers need to be able to roll their systems back to the last known good state before the attack took place. This is a fundamental part of any backup and recovery strategy, and one that should be tightly integrated within a company's broader security policy to ensure business as usual, as quickly as possible."

Acronis offers these tips to IT managers:

• Be prepared for a zero-day attack by employing a backup and recovery approach that allows you to roll back to the last know functional state before your systems become corrupt
• Take a holistic approach and consider your backup and recovery policy as an extension of your existing security strategy
• Be prepared to restore affected servers to any available hardware, not just back to the affected servers; that means you need to the ability to restore to different hardware as well
• It's all too easy to forget the recovery aspect of backup and recovery software. In fact, 89 per cent of companies only test their disaster recovery systems once a year or less. Speak to your IT service provider, systems integrator or other IT consultant to see how they can help you recover if you fall victim to a zero-day attack.