Acronis Active Protection is an advanced anti-ransomware technology. It actively protects all the data on your systems: documents, data of all kinds and Acronis backup files. It is a technology available for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems and protects against the latest ransomware actions such as Petya, WannaCry, Locky and Osiris.
What is Ransomware?
Ransomware is a particularly painful type of malware. Malware is “hostile or intrusive software” illegally introduced into your system for malicious reasons. When ransomware infects the system, it blocks access to data. Whoever introduced the malware will then make a cash request to unlock the data. In short, the mechanism is that of redemption.
To defend against this type of attack, it is necessary to constantly monitor the activities that take place in the system.
Find the patterns
Acronis Active Protection constantly observes the patterns in how files and data are changed. A set of behaviors can be typical and expected. Another may report a suspicious process that aims to initiate hostile actions against the data.
Acronis’ approach is as follows: examine these actions and compare them with patterns of malicious behavior. This approach can be exceptionally powerful in identifying ransomware attacks, even from variants that have not yet been reported. The latest version of Acronis Active Protection adds additional behavioral patterns to improve ransomware detection.
Acronis has invested heavily in a new dedicated machine learning infrastructure used for telemetry and data processing. The first step in the process is a stack trace analysis. It is possible to detect malicious code by using the stack trace analysis of a process based on the machine learning approach.
The data to be studied and analyzed are the stack trace dumps / frames which are sent as input to the Acronis Machine Learning module. The output of the analysis will be the verdict: clean or infected data. This approach takes active protection to a new level, especially when it comes to threats never used before (called Zero Day).
The system does not require signatures of any kind, but rather creates a model of what is acceptable and what is not. In this way, when hackers will find a new vulnerability or a new approach to infiltrate the system, they will hardly be able to pass this behavior check made thanks to the models applied by Acronis.
Defense against advanced threats
Acronis Active Protection can detect very sophisticated ransomware threats that usually appear as legitimate operations. The detection of attacks takes place thanks to the application of advanced heuristics and machine learning, but not only.
In fact, special mathematical approaches are also adopted to calculate the entropy of the files, in order to understand if the file has been modified even if the header remains the same. Many anti-ransomware solutions, on the other hand, only act based on file headers.
One way that criminals could choose to compromise files would be to attack the backup software itself to corrupt the backup files it creates. To protect against this, Acronis has implemented a robust self-defense mechanism that will not allow criminals to interrupt the work of the Acronis application or the contents of the backup files. In addition, Acronis Active Protection checks the Master Boot Record of Windows-based computers. Hence, it will not allow illegitimate changes to be made to prevent the computer from starting.
How it intervenes
If the ransomware attack starts encrypting files, Acronis quickly detects and stops this process. Since Acronis is a backup solution, any data that was exposed and encrypted before the process was stopped can be recovered from a variety of sources. This is remarkable, considering that not only can anti-ransomware solutions commonly fail to terminate an attack once it has begun, they also have no way of recovering files encrypted by the attack.
Acronis Active Protection detects and deflects attacks and restores files of any size.
The methodologies detect and deflect attacks and advanced file recovery. These protection approaches are not only leading the way against criminals, but they are more innovative and advanced than any other anti-ransomware methodology available.
The Acronis solution is able to identify:
– Hackers trying to infect or compromise local or cloud backups
– Reduced attacks and usually more difficult to detect (for example, changing only a small portion of a document or a photo stored deep in the hard disk)
– Attackers who come up with creative new ways to attempt maliciously manipulating files
Conclusions
The application of artificial intelligence in the field of cyber security has made giant strides in defense possible and is making life extremely complicated for hackers. The search for innovative solutions is now oriented towards the implementation of machine learning to try to capture malicious behavior rather than the attacks themselves. Acronis Active Protection does this and does it effectively, offering complete and efficient protection from ransomware attacks.
The threats do not end once the security of your systems and perimeter has been verified, you must adopt constant defense and verification solutions to ensure your data in the best possible way.
Useful links:
NAS
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a great low-cost tool for storing your data like backups (single files / folders or entire operating system images). Thanks to its connection (ethernet or wifi) with the local network (LAN) it is possible to easily copy the contents from your PC or server to the NAS using manual and / or automatic systems.
So why is not the NAS the reliable solution for storing my backups?
Although it is cheap and very easy to install, configuring it and using it presents some critical issues that do not make it ideal in professional work environments where data is a critical component and the backup and restore process must be absolutely guaranteed. Let’s see some examples together:
DISADVANTAGES OF BACKUP ON NAS
♦ Theft: typically the NAS are physically located inside the company (office, CED, etc.), in the same building where the data are stored that they keep the backup therefore in case a company should suffer the theft of the equipment the latter would lose both the original data present in the computers / servers and their backup contained in the NAS;
♦ Damages: Catastrophic events (earthquakes, tsunamis, tsumamis, floods, fires, etc) could damage the company’s computer equipment, destroying both the original data and the backups stored on the NAS;
♦ Ransomware: the latest variants of ransomware are able to encrypt the content of the data stored in the NAS, which makes this tool ineffective because the backup would be in turn compromised and its data not usable.
Do not limit yourself to the NAS to save your data, save them in the Cloud with the BaaS services (Backup as a Service)
What are the countermeasures to protect your data?
ADVANTAGES OF THE BACKUP ON CLOUD
♦ Physical protection: keeping your backups on the Cloud means relying on Cloud Providers who, thanks to their Datacenter, are able to guarantee the physical security of the data, also in compliance with the ISO certifications;
♦ Cloud: The Cloud by its nature allows to segregate data in order to protect the backups from ransomware viruses and all those activities (voluntary or involuntary cancellations) that constitute a threat to the data;
♦ Scalability: the size reserved for backup can easily be increased to adapt to continuous business changes.
Useful links:
New Cloud Server video – Create your Public Cloud
New Acronis Cloud Backup model for end users and new reseller plan
Stay in control of your fast-moving, quick-shifting data
Subscription business model – Basics
A Hybrid Cloud Backup Solution for System Integrator and reseller
BaaS | Cloud Backup | Backup as a Service
Cyber Risk Insurance
In the light of the recent cyber attacks and the rise of ransomware (like WannaCry and Petya), Secure Online Desktop in collaboration with Broker Busani Stefano of Union Brokers (see BROKER PRESENTATION) is pleased to present the Cyber Risk Assurance Guarantee as a valuable tool to increase The security of your data.
Cyber Risk Insurance – Description
The Cyber Risk Insurance Guarantee protects the customer even if the damage was caused by him. It protects you from all claims for damages even if the damage is due to:
- – error;
- – Negligence;
- – Breach;
- – Omission of duties;
- – Serious blow;
- – Abuse for:
- – violation of Network Security;
- – Malware;
- – Hacking;
- – D.O.S. (Denial of Service) attacks;
- – Unauthorized access or use;
- – Privacy.
It also covers Cyber extortion: the sums that the insured pays to end an Cyber-Extortion event (i.e. a threat received to the computer system in order to claim money from the insured).
It also includes loss of data: caused by human error, programming error, blackout, malicious informatics, D.O.S. attacks, malware, hacking, unauthorized use or access.
It covers all the expenses that arise from these events and covers the expenses for lawyers, perpetrators and costs incurred.
When unfortunately these events happen, the company stays at times for days, sometimes unfortunately for weeks!
The Cyber Risk Insurance Guarantee also covers the economic losses that have caused your business to stop!
To whom does it turn?
This product is aimed at all small and medium-sized companies with a turnover of less than € 25million. Excluding retailers.
What do you need to do in practice?
To sign up for the policy, simply sales((at))secure-od.com and we will follow the client to analyze the degree of risk of his activity by setting the right security for the Cyber event.
Business Case
Prestigious 5-star hotel in Tyrol (Austria), the keys to all hotel rooms are electronic keys on the board, hackers take over the hotel’s computer system and block the opening of all the doors to the hotel rooms. Clients are panicky, while hacking requests for tens of thousands of euros – the hotel has no choice: it pays. The policy reimburses the hotel how much the hotel paid to hackers.
USEFUL LINKS:
♦ Stay in control of your fast moving data
Episodes like the one that happened yesterday remind us more and more of the importance of having a backup. Backup in Cloud can be a valuable countermeasure to Ransomware (to know more about Ransomware see the comprehensive guide about Ransomware from Cloudwards).
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- Acronis Active Protection: defense against ransomware November 23, 2020
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