Don't Fall Victim to Cloud Backup Ransomware Attacks like this one! 

Recently a Danish company, CloudNordic, had Cybercriminals wipe all servers and customer data, now they are telling their customers they can't and won't pay the ransom demand. CloudNordic has told customers to consider all of their data lost following a ransomware infection that encrypted the large Danish cloud provider's servers.

According to the IT outfit's update, customers are being told that even the backups were trashed as well as production data. Despite the breach,  CloudNordic is NOT prepared to pay a ransom, presumably to restore the information and systems, to the extortionists responsible for the intrusion. CloudNordic, has told their customers they will not be restoring any of their data. CloudNordic advises that their "best estimate" is that the infection happened as servers were being moved from one datacenter to another. Some of the machines were apparently infected before the move, and during the transfer servers that had been on separate networks were all connected to CloudNordic's internal network. This gave the hackers access to both the central administrative systems, storage, as well as replication backup system and secondary backups, all of which they promptly encrypted for extortion.

"We cannot and do not want to meet the financial demands of the criminal hackers for ransom,"

Secondary 'Air Gapped' Backups for Data Protection

Air gapping involves keeping an offline copy of important information to prevent any chances of data being compromised. The “air” in the technique’s title literally describes the concept of keeping a barrier between data and online access to it. When a network is devastated by major events like cyber-attacks, system failures, or even natural disasters, people and businesses are then faced with the daunting task of initiating disaster recovery procedures to regain what has been lost. When you use an air gap backup, you’ve already built a fortified layer of network protection by ensuring it always exists. Also known as an air wall, air gapping utilizes isolation of the system’s network, keeping it separate from other connected devices and preventing online access to the air gapped computer. The 3-2-1 rule is a well-known strategy for protecting data systems in the cybersecurity industry.

The basic concept:

Clone at least three different copies of your most critical and important data.

Utilize at least two different types of media to store data (such as cloud storage or on a disk).

Keep at least one of those copies in a different physical space, somewhere that is offsite from where the main network lives.