Ransomware has been gaining momentum in recent years. In fact, according to Cybersecurity Ventures, attacks are occurring every 11 seconds, and in 2021, ransomware cost the world $20 billion in damages — which was 57x more than it was in 2015.
When ransomware struck Talman Software, a major wool-management IT solution in Australia, it shut down wool sales in early 2020 for weeks. Talman Software is used by the majority of the wool industry across Australia and New Zealand, and the attack prevented brokers from being able to buy and sell wool.
Brokers like Australian Wool Handlers (AWH) were significantly impacted by the attack. Darryl Drake, CIO at AWH said “At three of our major sites, wool is sold in what is called an open-cry auction. It’s important to note that AWH actually sells over 80% of all wool sold in Australia. The ransomware attack crippled the auctions business for nearly three weeks, completely preventing AWH from selling wool on the open-cry auction.”
The ransomware attack encrypted Talman Software’s data and backups, all of which were onsite and online. This is an emerging trend, as with strains like Conti, cybercriminals are encrypting, corrupting, and deleting backups before compromising as much production data as possible, which makes recovery a grueling challenge.
The Talman Software attack was a clear signal to Drake and his team that they needed to move backups to the cloud — offsite and off the company’s network. They also felt it was critical to identify a resilient solution that would deliver multi-layer defense against ransomware.
Out with Veeam and in with the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud
The company was using Veeam to protect data on VMware VMs and Windows file servers, but the backup data was both on-premises and on its network.“Veeam backups were all still online. We needed to move our backups to the cloud so they would be off site and off our network,” said Drake.
The team discovered the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud in its search for cloud-native data protection and was impressed by its 100% at-scale software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. It was immediately clear the ways in which Druva could advance their organization’s cyber, data, and operational resilience without any hardware, software, or associated complexity.
By the end of 2020, AWH had migrated its backups for hybrid workloads like VMware and Windows file servers from Veeam to Druva, leveraging air-gapped cloud backups. It also expanded its use of the platform for the comprehensive backup of Microsoft 365 (Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams) for 430 users.
Multi-layered cyber resilience delivered by Druva
Cybercrime will cost businesses $10.5 trillion globally annually by 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures — impacting brand reputation, customer experience, regulatory compliance, and operations. Simply being security-conscious is no longer enough, nor is having a prevention-only strategy.
The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud provides a single system of records across data protection, security, and governance stacks, enabling better collaboration across key IT functions driving business resilience and compliance.
With the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud successfully deployed, AWH now has the multi-layer defense against ransomware it was searching for. Drake’s team is confident its data center workloads and Microsoft 365 backup data are protected from encryption and deletion should a ransomware attack hit their organization. Unlike the on-premises Veeam solution previously used, Druva’s cloud-native architecture provides multi-layer cyber defense for data and accelerates the recovery process.
The x-factor — 3x faster recoveries and global deduplication storage savings with Druva
“The driving force for us to select the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud was that when we tested it, it did what it said it would do, and was extremely easy to use. Regarding the latter, I’m referring to the backups — timing of them — and recoveries. What impressed us was how quickly it backed up to the cloud, and, more importantly, it was 3x faster and much easier to restore,” said Drake.
Another benefit from the team’s perspective is Druva’s global, source-side deduplication. “We needed solid encryption and deduplication to reduce the amount of data that gets transferred to the cloud. The 3.14 deduplication ratio we get with the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud was a significant factor in our deciding to go with Druva,” said Drake. “Since we began using Druva, the backup windows are always met.”
What’s next?
Read the AWH case study to learn more about how the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud protects 100% of business-critical data (SaaS applications and hybrid workloads), and meets the company’s goals of off-site and off-network backups.