Guardant Health Improves Data Protection Across Distributed Workforce and Apps

From managing SOC and CERT teams to choosing solutions for their security stack, IT leaders make decisions with colossal consequences. Druva customer Craig Guinasso, Senior Director of Data Security and Compliance at Guardant Health, along with Druva VP Brian Hunt, share top-of-mind ransomware concerns for security leaders: challenges, recovering from an attack, and actionable best practices for cyber resilience.

Major Challenges in Today’s Security Environment

What are you seeing in the cyber resilience landscape?

According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Report, ransomware is targeting healthcare with complex types of extortion. For example, the newest Hive strain of ransomware demands ransom payment for an encryption key and to prevent the public release of confidential information, like medical records. With this double extortion method, threat actors are forcing organizations to find solutions that safeguard their data and quickly recover it.

What are the key challenges that impact IT leaders’ ability to manage data security?

Automation and Orchestration

Craig Guinasso recommends building security strategies like auto manufacturers build safety into cars. Parts of infosec require users to just do the right thing, like putting on their seat belt. Nevertheless, he recognizes that we’re human. Instead of relying on employees to follow security protocol (like connecting to a VPN or reporting phishing emails), organizations should implement safety measures, like airbags and brakes, that protect the systems and data. Implement boundaries around data and identify who should access segments of it, so it can only be used in ways that can’t be compromised.

Integrating Backups

Integrating backups is an added data security challenge for IT leaders. Ideally, you don’t ever want to think about your data backups. If a server or endpoint goes down, you need to quickly restore the data and seamlessly move away from the impacted device with confidence. This, of course, requires the right solution. See why IT leaders have trouble sleeping?

Must-Haves for Modernizing Data Protection Strategy and Improving Legacy Components of Your Tech Stack?

• Ability to restore endpoints, servers, and cloud applications. With that, the ability to backup data (ex: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) into a central place
• Data must be stored off-premises and air-gapped
• Data needs to be indexed and searchable in a central place
• Data must be deduplicated, along with the ability to make sure it hasn’t been tampered with in any way

Role-Based Access

There must be role-based access to data. For example, IT needs access for specific functions like laptop backups and server restoration, but doesn’t need access to all data. Typically, four to five teams within a company have unique use cases to access data which may include legal, security, compliance, etc. Each team has different needs and should have access based on those needs only. 

By implementing air-gapping and immutability, internal threats and compromised credentials can’t access or change data. Having curated recovery, a feature built into Druva’s 100% SaaS platform, results in a dramatic reduction of downtime. You can go back to any timeframe and pull the data you need without having to worry about pulling infected files. 

Now is the perfect time to implement a data protection and cyber resilience strategy across your distributed workforce.

Druva — a Leader for Enterprise Cyber Resilience

The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud ensures data integrity with air-gapped, immutable backups that enforce rapid recovery at-scale, and make it impossible for ransomware to execute in your backup environment. Our 100% SaaS platform transforms every stage of the recovery process so you get critical business functions back online and avoid paying the ransom. Explore Druva’s comprehensive ransomware defense platform on the cyber resilience solution page.

Learn More

Visit Druva’s Cyber Resilience Virtual Summit 2021 hub to watch the full session with Guardant Health, as well as our other sessions available on demand. In eight 10-15 minute sessions, security leaders, Druva experts, and industry peers discuss how to make ransomware no more than a minor inconvenience, rather than a business-ender. If your data is taken hostage, you need the proven SaaS leader on your side to recover quickly with complete confidence.