The Comprehensive

Ransomware Guide
with Veritas

White Paper | January 2023

Contents

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Version Management and Prompt System Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Zero Trust Model and Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Immutable and Indelible Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Data Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Configuration and Network Segmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Deployment and the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Complete Endpoint Visibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Optimize for Rapid Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Frequency and Diligent Rehearsals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Educate Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Our Strategy: Protect, Detect, Recover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Protect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Identity and Access Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Data Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Immutable/Indelible Image Management and Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Solution Hardening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Detect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Backup and Storage Infrastructure Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Anomaly Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Primary Storage Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Malware Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Recover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

NetBackup Resiliency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Other Recovery Methods with NetBackup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Competitive Differentiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

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Executive Summary

Today, cybersecurity and the threat of ransomware attacks are top concerns for every industry throughout the globe. According to
the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, there were 19 attacks every second, with 623.3 million attacks globally. It’s now clear that
ransomware is the fastest-growing type of cybercrime. Ransomware as a service (RaaS) has developed into an organized, lucrative
business model and attackers are continually evolving creative techniques to pass even the most vigilant frontline security. Old
techniques like phishing are still prominent, but new, sophisticated methods involving social engineering, targeting internet of Things
(IoT) devices and infrastructure as well as software vulnerabilities are gaining popularity. That’s why it’s critical for IT teams to realize
they can’t achieve true ransomware resiliency by endpoint security alone. Instead, they need a multi-layered strategy.

Many organizations might consider backup and recovery of their data to be the last line of defense against ransomware attacks.
At Veritas, we recommend prioritizing a secure backup strategy and optimizing for recovery as a meaningful and reliable part of a
comprehensive, multi-layered cybersecurity strategy. It’s not just your data that goes down when you’re attacked—it’s your business.

Veritas solutions were developed with resiliency at top of mind and security at their core, so we could provide our customers with
dependable solutions to ensure their business stays up and running with minimal impact. Our solutions protect IT systems and
safeguard data integrity with a wide range of Zero Trust security controls, workload support, and industry-leading immutable and
indelible storage options to suit varying needs. Our solutions provide complete visibility of your entire environment, including physical,
virtual, and cloud workloads and ranging from storage to compute and even across other backup vendors and services, ensuring no
system falls through the cracks. Our tools provide you with near-real-time, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven detection of anomalous
behaviors or activities associated with both data and user activity across your whole environment. Our automated and on-demand
malware scanning also provides clear warning prompts, spot-checking of known high-risk areas, and recovery of clean data. When
it comes to recovery, the Veritas brand has been synonymous with resiliency for decades. Dependable Veritas solutions incorporate
proven technology, so you can recover quickly with flexible, automated, and orchestrated options that have your business back up and
running in minutes.

Introduction

This paper focuses on Veritas solutions that comprise the industry’s most comprehensive, compliant, and secure ransomware resiliency
platform. Our solutions help provide valuable peace of mind, reduce risk, and ensure you can protect, detect, and recover your data and
stay resilient against the ever-evolving threat of ransomware.

This paper is designed for business and technical audiences, including customers, partners, and others who want to learn more about
how our solutions help protect against and recover from a malicious attack.

This white paper will help you:

• Learn how to protect your IT systems and safeguard data integrity

• Understand how Veritas solutions help you monitor and mitigate threats and vulnerabilities

• Explore options for rapid and complete cross-system restoration and develop your plan to optimize your environment for recovery

It’s important to note that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for ransomware resiliency, and this paper is not intended to be all-
encompassing. Veritas gives you the freedom to choose from a variety of solutions that best fit each application’s specific recovery
needs. You should implement a multi-layered and comprehensive strategy structured around the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) methodology—identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. In addition to what we share in this white paper, we
recommend you retain traditional security measures as a primary part of your organization’s defensive strategy; make sure to add
firewalls, email, and spam filters plus anti-malware and point protection software; and introduce segmented network strategies and
employee education programs.

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Enterprises must develop, rehearse, and consistently evaluate their strategy to evolve with the growing sophistication of threats
and their technologies. Practicing regular rehearsals and validation are vital for success to ensure things actually work when you’re
in crisis mode. Plus, it’s always advisable to hire a third-party agency to audit your strategy, check your work, and help you identify
vulnerabilities.

Let’s dive into our recommended best practices for an organization’s backup ecosystem (see Figure 1).

Best Practices for Ransomware Immunity

Promptly Update Deployment and the Zero Configuration and Endpoint

and Upgrade 3-2-1-1 Backup Strategy Trust Network Segmentation Visibility

Immutable and Optimize for Rehearse and Data Encryption Educate

Indelible Rapid Recovery Test, Test, Test At-rest and In-transit Employees

Figure 1. Recommended best practices for an organization’s backup ecosystem.

Best Practices

Although ransomware can cause serious damage to your business and reputation, it’s not invincible. In fact, it’s only as strong as your
organization’s weakest link. The good news is that there are clear steps your organization can take to avoid becoming a cybercrime
target and diminish the likelihood an attack could take down your business.

NIST developed a recommended Cybersecurity Framework that helps organizations put in place a comprehensive, structured
methodology around five key functions—identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. Veritas is aligned with this approach and
recommends implementing our solutions within the broader NIST framework.

When it comes to an organization’s backup ecosystem, Veritas recommends keeping in mind the key best practices shown in Figure 1.

Version Management and Prompt System Updates

• Reduce vulnerability exposure by staying up-to-date with security patches and releases that contain security updates

• Monitor Veritas Technical Alerts by visiting the Veritas Support website or Veritas Services and Operations Readiness Tools (SORT)

Zero Trust Model and Policies

• Develop a mindset where no device or user is trusted by default, even if they are inside the corporate network

• Instead of just requiring a password (yes, even if it’s long and complicated), use identity and access management by implementing
role-based access control (RBAC) and two-factor authentication (or multi-factor authentication, MFA) to limit access to only
required functionality for each persona and prevent account takeover from using a single credential

• Always require users to log in with their own credentials

• Never use factory passwords anywhere. Change built-in generic user IDs and passwords, including the host ‘admin,’ ‘maintenance,’
RMM ‘sysadmin,’ and ‘nbasecadmin’ accounts

• Limit or lockdown access to backups, which is a common entry method for ransomware and another pair of 10/25 Gb Ethernet
ports for client-facing data protection traffic.

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Immutable and Indelible Storage

One of the best ways to safeguard your data against ransomware is to implement immutable (can’t be changed) and indelible (can’t be
deleted) storage with an internally managed compliance clock.

Data Encryption

• Implement in-transit encryption to protect your data from being compromised within the network

• Implement at-rest encryption to prevent ransomware or bad actors from stealing your data and threatening to make it public or take
other malicious actions

Configuration and Network Segmentation

• Follow security implementation guides

• Harden your environment by enabling firewalls that restrict access to ports and processes

• Update the default Primary Catalog backup policy

• Set up a backup policy for the NetBackup Key Management Server (KMS)

Deployment and the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

3-2-1-1 Backup Strategy
• Adopt the “3-2-1” best practice approach of backing up data

3 +
At least 3 sets of your data
recommended by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency (CISA): keep three copies of data on two different
media types, with one off-site. We recommend taking this approach
one step further creating a 3-2-1-1 strategy, by keeping at least

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Store 2 copies on different storage types
one copy on immutable and indelible storage (see Figure 2).

• Use Auto Image Replication (AIR) technology to replicate to

target domains.

1
Complete Endpoint Visibility Keep 1 copy off-site Immutable

Most organizations have a severe lack of visibility into remote

endpoints. It has now become a common practice for bad actors to
get past frontline security and hang out, staying dormant long enough
to locate weaknesses and find the opportune time to attack. It’s vital Figure 2. Keep three copies of data on two types of storage,
with one copy off-site and one on immutable storage.
you implement tools that provide complete visibility across your full
environment, detect anomalies, and hunt for and alert you to malicious activity on your network, giving ransomware no place to hide.
This approach will help you mitigate threats and vulnerabilities before bad actors have the chance to act.

Optimize for Rapid Recovery

Most ransomware attackers hope for two things: time for the attack to spread and money (from you) to make it stop. Historically,
recovery could take weeks or even months when it was a manual, labor-intensive process that extended across multiple stakeholders
within an organization. Now, recovery can be orchestrated and automated with flexible and alternative options—like rapidly standing
up a data center on a public cloud provider—that can shorten downtime and provide alternatives to paying a ransom. With the right
systems in place, your organization’s recovery times can be reduced to seconds, if necessary.

Frequent and Diligent Rehearsals

Once you have your strategy in place, it’s vital to periodically test and rehearse. Not only will this practice help shorten threat response
times and minimize the impact of an attack, the enhanced visibility will help you identify problem areas to resolve and improve. Your
resiliency plan is only as good as your last test, so rehearsing and constantly revising your resiliency strategy is advantageous.

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Educate Employees

It’s common knowledge that employees are often the gateway for an attack. Modern phishing attacks and social engineering are now so
advanced they often fool security professionals.

Focus on training employees to identify phishing and social engineering tactics, build strong passwords, browse safely, use MFA, and
always use secure VPNs, never public Wi-Fi. Also ensure all employees know what to do and who to alert if they fall victim.

Our Strategy: Protect, Detect, Recover

Veritas empowers our customers to protect, detect, and recover from attacks with a broad range of product features and functionality
they can customize to meet their unique needs and requirements. Let’s look at the details that comprise the three strategic pillars of the
Veritas ransomware resiliency strategy.

Protect

The first step to ransomware resiliency is to ensure your critical and most important asset—data—and your IT infrastructure is
protected from the unknown and unexpected. Make sure all parts of your environment—from physical and virtual to cloud and
containers—are backed up with universal protection that is applied intelligently and managed automatically to scale properly. Then
your backup infrastructure and backed-up data become the last line of defense from an attack, and ultimately your organization’s key
to recovery. Veritas offers the widest support from edge to core to cloud, with 800+ data sources, 1,400+ storage , and 60+ cloud
providers, so your environment is always protected and always recoverable.

Cloud, database, and virtual machine (VM) administrators save a lot of time using Intelligent Policies that automatically detect and
protect an application or compute instances with the appropriate level of protection.

Veritas focuses on safeguarding data integrity to help ensure backup files remain safe and untouched from malicious invaders. To
maintain data integrity, we offer a wide range of security controls to help with data protection.

Identity and Access Management

• Role-based access—Granular access controls you can

tailor to meet specific persona needs, specifying who
can access data and defining what actions they can or
cannot perform (see Figure 3).

• Single sign-on—Support for Active Directory and

LDAP as well as SAML 2.0. Organizations can use
their authentication provider to achieve two-factor
authentication.

• Customizable authentication—NetBackup
Flex Appliances support configurable
authentication strength.

Data Encryption

• In-transit—Ensure your data is being sent to

Figure 3. The access permissions dashboard in NetBackup.
authenticated environments and is protected while
in transit. This solution leverages Veritas or customer-provided TLS 1.2 certificates, with 2048-bit+ key support to ensure data
encryption during transit.

• At-rest—If attackers are successful in getting to your data, having it encrypted protects it from being exploited. Veritas offers AES
256-bit, FIPS 140-2 cryptography with our own key management while allowing you to leverage your preferred key management
using the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP).

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Immutable/Indelible Image Management and Storage

• Flexible, storage-agnostic image management

ν Flexible options, including BYO, Appliance, cloud, and software as a service (SaaS) immutability keep your data secure and
compliant, regardless of location.

ν The OpenStorage Technology (OST) API lets you manage immutable backup images with Veritas or third-party storage solutions.

ν Supports primary, secondary (duplication), and cross-domain replication (with AIR), giving you unlimited configuration options
across any backup storage tier.

ν Use cloud immutable storage with Amazon S3 Object Lock to ensure your cloud data is secure and unable to be compromised. To
learn more about NetBackup’s cloud immutable storage, see the Object Lock support for AWS technical brief.

ν NetBackup Flex Appliance deployment provides both immutable and indelible storage.

• Images stored in WORM (write once, read many) storage

ν NetBackup Flex includes a WORM storage server that offers a secure, container-based MSDP solution.

ν NetBackup Flex offers Enterprise and Compliance lock-down modes, so you can choose the right immutability strength
(see Figure 4).

Compliance Clock
Independent of OS Time

Flex Appliance
NetBackup Catalog
Immutability Mode
(Backup metadata) Compliance or Enterprise

S3 Object Lock
Client Source
Data (Objects)

Target Dedupe
MSDP
Plugin
(OST)

NetBackup Services WORM Storage Flex Container

Server(s) Storage
Choice of Immutable Storage

• Decides when images can be deleted/edited

• Sets protection plans, defines policies
• Data cannot be deleted by NetBackup

Figure 4. An overview of immutable storage options in NetBackup.

ν Compliance mode enables immutable storage, in which no user, including the root user, can delete data during a predefined
retention period.

ν Enterprise mode protects data from being deleted during a predefined retention period, but only users with special permissions
can alter the retention settings or delete the data using dual authorization. Two individuals with different RBAC levels must agree
to make any changes to the retention time or modify or delete data.

ν NetBackup Flex has completed a third-party Immutability Assessment from Cohasset Associates, an industry-recognized
assessor of immutability controls, specifically SEC Rule 17a-4(f), FINRA Rule 4511©, and the principles of the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in regulation 17 CFR § 1 31(c)-(d).

ν To read the Cohasset Associates’ assessment of NetBackup, visit Veritas.com.

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Solution Hardening

NetBackup Flex and NetBackup Flex Scale have been hardened from a software and hardware perspective to offer a complete secure
solution that supports immutable and indelible storage. The solution offers a secure WORM storage sever and hardware security
features.

• Throughout the development cycle, Veritas analyzes NetBackup Flex and Flex Scale code for vulnerabilities using recognized third-
party detection tools that perform:

ν Static code analysis

ν Runtime vulnerability checks

ν Penetration testing

• NetBackup Flex and Flex Scale come with a wide variety of security features that include:

ν OS security hardening, including Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux)

ν Intrusion Detection System (IDS)/Intrusion Protection System (IPS)

ν Robust role-based authentication

ν Locked-down storage

ν A secure, robust, and hardened Veritas File System

For details, refer to the Veritas Flex Appliances with NetBackup Security white paper to support secure deployment as well as the
Veritas Flex Appliances with NetBackup white paper.

Detect

Bad actors are looking for your weakest links, the dark corners where there may be limited security and/or oversight in your environment.
Veritas offers solutions that provide full infrastructure awareness, shining a light on all the dark data in your environment, ensuring you
know everything in your environment and it is all safe, secure, and capable of overcoming the threat of ransomware. Veritas also offers
anomaly and malware detection that provides a valuable chance to act before cybercriminals or malicious code has the opportunity to
do so.

Backup and Storage Infrastructure Awareness

When it comes to ransomware, every second matters. Veritas Alta™ Analytics for cloud and NetBackup IT Analytics for on-premises
can help your company understand the breadth and depth of a ransomware attack so you can recover strategically. With the correlated
environmental insights of NetBackup IT Analytics—on-prem, in the cloud, data protection, and storage—alerting and reporting is
comprehensive and easy to set up. You’ll have the insights needed to make informed decisions in the face of an attack with these
analytics reporting options that help you gain visibility into your backup environment, enabling your organization to:

• Discover all hosts or VMs in your infrastructure and compare them with the VMs protected by NetBackup

• Flag hosts that are missing from the backups or have no recent backups as potential risks

• Detect the potential ransomware-affected files along with their size and where they reside in the environment

• Use interactive graphs that provide a historical view of the risks generated

NetBackup Analytics provides end-to-end backup monitoring that includes:

• Mitigation Analysis (see Figure 5)

• Sources with Consecutive Failures

• Sources with No Recent Backup

• Backup Failures by Application

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NetBackup Analytics identifies potential false positives by comparing historical backups against the new backup and identifying
anomalies such as significant changes in job durations, image size variations, and/or policy configuration changes.

Figure 5. The ransomware risk assessment dashboard in NetBackup IT Analytics.

To learn more, see Increasing Ransomware Resiliency: Gain complete infrastructure awareness with NetBackup IT Analytics.

Anomaly Detection

Veritas detects strange data and user activity across your entire environment and alerts you to suspicious anomalies in near real-time
using AI-powered anomaly detection with Veritas Alta™ Data Protection for cloud and NetBackup for on-premises. The technology is
able to mine an enormous amount of data, automate monitoring and reporting, and provide actionable insights into what is happening in
your environment. Alerts could be things like unusual file write activity that could indicate an infiltration, but it could also be detecting
known ransomware file extensions, file access patterns, traffic patterns, code downloads, access requests, storage capacity surges,
external traffic paths, or even an unexpected jump in activity compared to individuals’ typical patterns.

This feature ensures your data is always recoverable and enables you to take immediate action when ransomware strikes,
isolating backups with malware and limiting its impact. Veritas solutions give administrators the ability to view data and provides
recommendations associated with anomalies at any time by monitoring all your devices and establishing early warning of any attacks,
so you can stay on top of issues as they arise.
AI-powered anomaly detection seamlessly
integrates into the NetBackup Primary server,
enabling it to detect anomalous forms of
observations—considering those that do not
fall into the cluster as anomalies or outliers.
This capability lets a backup administrator
see anomalies and drill down to identify any
concerns. It offers the ability to mine large
amounts of data and provide actionable
intelligence to address ransomware events or
simply changes in the environment with which an
administrator should be aware (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Use NetBackup to detect anomalies and take action accordingly.

To learn more about anomaly detection
capabilities, see the Veritas Anomaly Detection technical brief.

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Primary Storage Detection

Veritas not only addresses secondary backup data with NetBackup, but also primary storage—where the application lives—with Veritas
Alta™ Data Insight for cloud and NetBackup Data Insight for on-premises. Data Insight supplements existing security detection tools
by providing anomalous behavior detection, custom ransomware-specific query templates, and file extension identification useful
for detecting ransomware. Data Insight includes policy-based monitoring and alerting that is near-real-time, which helps detect any
malicious or anomalous behavior from user accounts. It does so by scanning the unstructured data systems it monitors and collecting
audits of all user activities performed on all files—such as read, write, create, delete, and rename—while also doing security and file
counts for each user (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. Setting up a User Activity Detection Policy in Data Insight.

This technology compares historical data it has collected and looks for statistical standard deviations to help detect anomalous
behavior while identifying accounts that might be compromised due to ransomware. Data Insight can also detect malicious user
accounts or ransomware-specific activity and can identify the location of potential ransomware files.

Malware Detection

Veritas provides both automated and on-demand scans for protected backups. The automated malware scanning feature will remove
human dependencies and allow artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) technology to jump in and scan for malware. The malware
scan is automatically triggered by a high anomaly score. Scanning includes unstructured data, both Windows and Linux. This inclusion is
vital because malware often enters your environment in a home directory because these are typically the locations where large sets of
unstructured data exist.

When recovery is necessary, the backup data is scanned. Clear visuals and warning prompts provide awareness of impacted backups,
ensuring all data restored is clean and unimpacted. This practice is often referred to as restoring to the “last-known-good” copy.
(See Figure 8.)

During Backup Post Backup Backup Restore

✓
Cloud

X Bare
Metal

Original
Client Sources NetBackup Backup Source
Data (Objects) Storage ✓ More cost-efficient
than storage scanning

e.g. backups of internet-

facing Windows clients

AI Anomaly Detection Automatic Malware Scanning Scanning Prior to Restore

Near-Real Time Based on Anomaly Detection Ensures Clean Data

Figure 8. A high-level overview of malware detection in NetBackup.

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Recover

Cyberattacks are never one-size-fits-all. In today’s ever-evolving threat landscape, it is vital to set up an optimized strategy that extends
far beyond restore points and single backup copies. Architecting an optimized and simplified recovery experience will help you get back
up and running in minutes instead of hours and days, regardless of scale.

Traditionally, organizations have considered backup and recovery to be the last line of defense, but with Veritas solutions, environments
are optimized for recovery and it becomes an essential component in resiliency success. Veritas provides a variety of solutions that
ensure operational and business resiliency by providing the flexibility and choice necessary for rapid recovery. Why is that flexibility
important? Sometimes everything is impacted
and you may need to recover an entire data Recovery at-scale complexities
center in the cloud and on demand. On the
+
other hand, maybe just a portion of your –
environment is impacted, so having solutions
in place that let you grab individual databases Heterogeneity Dependencies
and files to recover quickly to production can Mixture of compute environments across Management of complex infrastructure,
be crucial. In the case where entire servers data centers from edge to core to cloud. networks, storage and cross-functional teams.
(Physical, Virtual, Cloud, Hybrid, Tape) (on-prem, hybrid, cloud)
become encrypted, you may need to quickly
Flexible, hybrid and rapid recovery. Multi-component tiered applications.
recover those servers elsewhere. Or maybe Recovery not always possible Recover from clean data, anywhere to
you just need to recover a large number of VMs back to original or scaling from anywhere. (edge to core to cloud)
object level to data center recovery.
back to production. Can be a time-consuming, laborious,
Cost effective, non-disruptive recovery manual process.
rehearsals Increased productivity Education and skills gaps.
Veritas provides solutions to the recovery at- and reduced downtime.
scale complexities shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9. The recovery at-scale complexities Veritas solutions address.

Veritas Resiliency Platform

Veritas Resiliency Platform solves these recovery challenges by providing automated orchestration across your organization’s entire
heterogeneous environment with a consistent user experience and visibility into the best recovery options based on the options
available, so you can meet your recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). (See Figure 10)

Figure 10. The Resiliency dashboard in the NetBackup web UI.

To achieve the most efficient RTO, Veritas provides insight into recovery operations that helps determine the best method of recovery
by understanding your RTOs, workload(s), and application(s) throughout your entire data center.

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Veritas Resiliency Platform enables orchestration across heterogeneous environments that include the workload and application as well
as the corresponding data using automated replication, storage-based replication, or NetBackup’s built-in data mover lets you choose
the RTO and RPO that meet your application’s business requirements.

Specifically, the solution supports automation by leveraging Virtual Business Services (disaster recovery protection for a multi-tier
application) with Resiliency and Evacuation Plans (the runbook), allowing you to automate recovery at-scale between data centers or to
cloud infrastructures.

The solution also allows for push-button rehearsed validation in isolated networks. In ransomware recovery scenarios, organizations can
leverage custom scripts to integrate with third-party virus scanning solutions within the workflow to validate against malware prior to
returning to production.
Granular Recovery Points
From an RPO perspective, NetBackup for
Replication Periodicity
on-premises and Veritas Alta™ Data Protection for (update set time
cloud continuous data protection (CDP) provides granularity)

added resiliency through granular recovery of

VMs with near-zero RPO. CDP ensures recovery
capability for applications across your heterogeneous
environment using granular recovery points in Time

Resiliency’s near-real-time data replication (see

Recovery Window
Figure 11). This capability supports recovery Last Current
Rollback Time Time
from malware or corruption when it’s already been
replicated. Figure 11. An overview of NetBackup’s continuous data protection.

Learn about more about Continuous Data Protection

for VMware and advanced resiliency options for
VMware application protection by reviewing the Recovery Options
respective blogs.
Traditional Recovery
Resiliency CDP

Other Recovery Methods with NetBackup

Instant Access
Replication

Cloud/LTR
Veritas provides a variety of other recovery
methods to meet your RTOs and RPOs, giving
you the flexibility to choose the best method of
Time to Granularity
recovery for your organization. Figure 12 recover available for
illustrates the optimal recovery option based (RTO) recovery (RPO)

on RPOs and RTOs.

RTO & RPO objectives determine optimal option
NetBackup Instant Rollback for VMware—Provides
Figure 12. Choosing an optimal recovery option based on RTOs and RPOs.
high-speed VM recovery by using Change Block
Tracking to identify which unique blocks need to
be recovered and applying just those changes to bring your VM back to a healthy state—from a disaster or ransomware attack—in
seconds, instead of minutes or hours. This process effortlessly recovers 1 or 100 machines, providing quick bulk recovery regardless of
where your infrastructure lives.

For more information on Instant Rollback for VMware, read this blog.

VM recovery—There are eight types of recovery available for one backup of VMware VMs: full VM, individual VMDK, file and folder, full
application, Instant Access, file download, application GRT, and AMI conversion. Added support for vTPM ensures backup and restore
for high-security environments.

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Instant Access for MSSQL and VMware—With Instant Access for VMware, you can recover any machine almost instantly, without
waiting to transfer the VM’s data from the backup (see Figure 13). You can also use a backup to test or recover VMs directly from
backup storage. These VMs will automatically show up as regular guests in the VMware infrastructure. In addition, you can browse and
recover individual files right in the NetBackup web UI. For quick recovery scenarios, you can use VMware Storage vMotion to migrate
the VM from backup storage to production while in use.

Browse available recovery points for a Select the files or folders to recover Verify the list of files or folders for download
protected VMware Virtual Machine

NetBackup Instant Access mounts the The packaged files or folders

backup image to extract files into a package are available for download

Figure 13. Using VMware Instant Access to back up VMs across your infrastructure.

For complete configuration and details, please see the Veritas NetBackup for VMware Administrator’s Guide.

Instant Access for MSSQL provides instantaneous availability of databases and granular recovery of database elements using backup
storage (see Figure 14). Self-service capabilities enable database administrators to quickly provision MSSQL databases for their
dev/test needs. If some copies of data are impacted by ransomware, NetBackup gives you the flexibility to recover from any available
backup copy using both our interface and APIs (see Figure 15).

Figure 14. NetBackup provides granular point-in-time Figure 15. Recover databases from any copy of an
recovery options for MSSQL. MSSQL backup.

NetBackup Snapshot Manager—Using container technology and cloud service providers Independent of the storage platform,
NetBackup Snapshot Manager uses cloud-native snapshot technology in a cloud vendor‒agnostic way that allows easy protection of
hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures. In addition, Snapshot Manager delivers functionally beyond the basic features in a public cloud,
enabling application-aware snapshots, single-file recovery, and multi-region snapshot migration. Snapshot Manager’s multiple account
support can securely store backups in a different account, reducing the impact in the event of a compromised account

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Universal Share and Protection Points—An MSDP feature, Universal Share allows you to provision deduplication-backed storage on
the NetBackup server as secure shares, thereby protecting databases or other workloads where no agent or backup API exists. You
can use Universal Share as network-attached storage (NAS) to store data using compression and deduplication. With full API support
and centralized management of shares and protection points in the NetBackup web UI plus user quota support and Active Directory
integration, NetBackup HA Appliances provide enhanced management Protection Points for Universal Shares that let you create a
point-in-time copy of the data on the share, instantly create a backup image, and then use it like any other backup.

For more information, see the Universal Shares section in the Veritas NetBackup Administrator’s Guide.

NetBackup Universal Shares for Oracle—Building on the features of Oracle, the latest version of NetBackup Universal Shares for
Oracle allows Oracle database admins to start up databases directly from a NetBackup Appliance’s storage.

For more information, see the Veritas NetBackup™ for Oracle Administrator’s Guide.

Long-Term Retention Archive—If you need to keep data for an extensive period of time, this option provides a cost-effective and
durable solution that features deduplication and compression of data. You can also use object storage and private or public clouds
with this method. For private cloud use cases, the Veritas Access Appliance in our Enterprise Data Services Platform provides long-
term retention (LTR). When you’re deciding on a recovery method, keep in mind that LTR solutions are cost-effective and optimal for
healthcare systems and other organizations that need to keep data for a long time. For organizations that prefer to continue to use tape
technologies, we have the most comprehensive, tape-based solution that offers a reliable, air-gapped way to recover from ransomware.

Traditional recovery—This method includes granular restore of a specific file, full server/application restore, and disaster recovery (DR)
restore to a different site location or the cloud. Using Veritas Resiliency Platform, you can automate and orchestrate traditional recovery
with the push of a button, streamlining the DR process.

Bare Metal Restore—If a ransomware recovery needs to leverage impacted hardware, bare metal restore (BMR) can be a valuable
solution when you have limited resources. BMR automates the server recovery process, making it unnecessary to reinstall operating
systems or configure hardware manually. When systems are corrupted and must be completely overwritten, BMR allows you to rebuild
systems quickly from scratch, restoring the OS and the application data with a single operation.

Competitive Differentiation

Our Veritas solutions ensure your data is always available and protected, help with application high availability, and provide proven
recovery at scale—all while maintaining business continuity in the event of attacks on data and infrastructure. Traditional competitors,
whether primary storage giants or scale-out vendors, do not approach ransomware resiliency comprehensively like Veritas. Compared
to the competition, Veritas approaches ransomware resiliency through a business value lens, providing a robust resiliency strategy by
solving for the protection, detection, and recovery from ransomware.

Here are some key questions to consider when selecting a data protection vendor:

• Does the solution provide ransomware resiliency at the core and the edge and in the cloud?

• Does it offer immutable storage whether deployed as BYO, appliance, cloud, or SaaS?

• Does the solution support the 3-2-1-1 backup copy rule in every scenario?

14
Veritas can do all the above and more:

• Offers multiple deployment options and the ransomware resiliency remains available for any enterprise deployment scenario

• Takes a multi-layer security approach for protecting backup data, closing back doors such as cluster resets, external clocks, or BIOS

• Uses a hardened OS to reduce the attack surface of ransomware

• Designs solutions from the 3-2-1-1 best practices, providing copy standard for tape support, immutable storage, and air gap

• Creates appliances with hardened containerized deployments, making it even tougher to get into than traditional physical or VM
form factors

• Includes built-in intrusion detection and protection in appliances that eliminates overhead on IT and security teams

• Offers detection not only at the backup monitoring level, but also expands it into infrastructure and the primary data access pattern
level, providing the ability to delete known ransomware as well as disable a potential breached account to minimize the impact of
ransomware

• Provides the ability to rollback only changes to VMs from ransomware attacks, making recovery from ransomware efficient
and quick

At Veritas, we understand the vital nature of resiliency. Consider two types of security systems monitoring a facility: one only looks at
the history of security footage to identify intrusion, and the other looks at the live feeds from the monitoring as well as the historical
footage. The system that looks at the live feeds also can disable access to the facility if it finds signs of intrusion. Which system do
you think is better? Veritas offers ransomware detection by monitoring production systems. This monitoring goes beyond size and
extensions while covering data and infrastructure. It can detect deviations in data access patterns and can lock down accounts that
might be used to run any ransomware/malware. By analyzing changes in backup attributes using AI/ML, Veritas Alta™ Data Protection
for cloud and NetBackup for on-premises can alert organizations about possible ransomware intrusions.

We recognize the need for data to be recovered in the most efficient and fastest way possible. NetBackup offers features such as instant
rollback recovery, providing the ability to negate any damage done by ransomware without needing full VM restores and shutdowns.
Veritas Alta™ Data Protection for cloud and NetBackup for on-premises allows recovery plans for thousands of VMs that may be part
of complex, multi-tier environments and the ability to run rehearsals of the same in an isolated environment. NetBackup Flex and Flex
Scale Appliances show some of the best-in-class numbers of optimized instant access and restores of key workloads. Veritas Alta™
SaaS Protection (formerly known as Netbackup Saas Protection) is also proven to handle petabyte-scale recoveries. All of these are key
research points when comparing the completeness of Veritas ransomware resiliency to that of any competitor.

Conclusion

Ransomware and malicious insiders pose serious threats. New operating system vulnerabilities are continually being discovered and
variants of known malware and ransomware are regularly being developed. Ransomware is big business, which means bad actors are
motivated to continue to innovate new ways to penetrate an organization’s infrastructure and halt its business. Even with significant
effort by system and backup administrators to protect corporate data, ransomware and malicious insiders can still occasionally get
through and impact a company’s most critical data. That’s why having a holistic, multi-layered, comprehensive strategy is essential—and
the best defense.

Veritas has simplified the process for you. Our solutions were developed with resiliency at top of mind, providing a single, unified
platform to help you protect IT systems and data integrity, detect by monitoring and mitigating, and recover quickly with automation
and orchestration. Our solutions reduce vulnerability, eliminate islands or potential attack surfaces, and are easy to scale, upgrade, and
maintain. No data is left unprotected, from edge to core to cloud. Although many consider backup and recovery to be the last line of
defense against ransomware attacks, we recommend considering it a meaningful and reliable part of your comprehensive, multi-layered
protect, detect, and recover cybersecurity strategy.

To learn more about our solutions, visit https://www.veritas.com/ransomware or contact us at https://www.veritas.com/form/

requestacall/requestacall.

15
References

Government

• The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
has produced a special publication titled “Data Integrity, Recovering from Ransomware and Other Destructive Events.” This is a
comprehensive, three-part document that details strategies organization should take to protect against malicious activity as well
as the recovery steps to take after a cybersecurity event.
NIST Special Publication 1800-11
“Data Integrity: Recovering from Ransomware and other Destructive Events” (main page)

ν NIST SP 1800-11a: Executive Summary

ν NIST SP 1800-11b: Approach, Architecture, and Security Characteristics – what we built and why

ν NIST SP 1800-11c: How-To Guides – instructions for building the example solution

• United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team: “Data Backup Options”

Veritas

• “Insider Threat 101: Detect and Protect with Veritas Data Insight”

To read more about the ransomware report templates, see these sections in the Veritas Data Insight User’s Guide:

ν About Data Insight custom reports

ν About DQL query templates

• Veritas Flex Appliances with NetBackup Security

• Veritas Flex Appliances with NetBackup

• Veritas Data Insight Administrator’s Guide

• Veritas Data Insight User’s Guide

• Veritas NetBackup Administrator’s Guide, Volume I

• Veritas NetBackup Appliance Administrator’s Guide

• Veritas NetBackup Appliance Fibre Channel Guide

• Veritas NetBackup Appliance Security Guide

• Veritas NetBackup Cloud Administrator’s Guide

• Veritas NetBackup Deduplication Guide

• Veritas NetBackup Security and Encryption Guide

• Veritas NetBackup for Oracle Administrator’s Guide

• Veritas NetBackup for VMware Administrator’s Guide

1 https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/security/the-11-biggest-ransomware-attacks-of-2020-so-far-

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ransomware. No other vendor is able to match the ability of Veritas to execute, with support for
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