Organizations have poured billions into perimeter and endpoint defenses—yet ransomware still slips through, exploiting stolen credentials, zero-days, and unseen gaps. Once inside cloud and virtual environments, attackers don’t just stop at encryption. They disable or evade EDR and XDR controls and silently infect multiple backup generations long before detection. By the time the SOC sounds the alarm, backups are already compromised, leaving recovery teams trapped in uncertainty: which restore points are truly safe?
This is why peace-time threat monitoring isn’t optional—it’s essential. Threat Watch offers continuous, proactive backup monitoring during everyday operations—not just during incidents—to catch ransomware early and block contaminated recovery points from ever being used. Without this, organizations remain dangerously exposed, risking prolonged downtime, data loss, and irreversible damage. The time to act is now.
Why Are Infrastructure Workloads Prime Ransomware Targets?
Cloud-native and virtualized workloads are attractive ransomware targets because they sit at the intersection of identity, compute, and data. Whether running in AWS EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, or VMware environments, these systems often host critical services such as:
Line of business applications (for example, ERP or billing systems running on application servers)
Databases and file servers storing shared and high-value data
Domain-joined workloads with privileged access, including management and application servers
When ransomware compromises these systems, encrypted files or malicious artifacts can be written to disk and subsequently captured in backups.
Attackers increasingly bypass perimeter defenses and move laterally inside infrastructure using trusted credentials and management tools, aiming to encrypt or corrupt data at scale, often before the compromise is detected.
How Ransomware Reaches AWS EC2, Azure VM, and VMware?
While deployment models differ, common ransomware entry paths across infrastructure workloads include:
Compromised Credentials and Privilege Escalation
Attackers obtain credentials via phishing, token theft, or credential dumping, then escalate privileges inside cloud or virtual environments.
Relevant MITRE ATT&CK techniques:
T1078 – Valid Accounts
T1003 – OS Credential Dumping
T1068 – Privilege Escalation
Once privileged, attackers can access multiple VMs rapidly.
Remote Services and Lateral Movement
Ransomware operators frequently move laterally using trusted protocols such as RDP, SMB, SSH, or WinRM to spread malware across virtual machines.
MITRE references:
- T1021 – Remote Services
- T1569 – System Services
- T1570 – Lateral Tool Transfer
This lateral spread often occurs silently before encryption begins.
Abuse of Automation, Scripts, and Management Tools
Attackers commonly deploy scripts or binaries via:
Startup scripts
Group policies
Cloud-init or VM extensions
MITRE references:
T1059 – Command and Scripting Interpreter
T1072 – Software Deployment Tools
This enables simultaneous execution across multiple workloads.
How Backups Become Infected
A critical but often overlooked risk is backup contamination.
Once ransomware executes on a VM:
Encrypted files, malicious binaries, or altered system states are captured in subsequent backups
If compromise goes undetected, multiple generations of backups may contain infected data
This creates a dangerous scenario:
Backups exist, but recovery confidence does not.
Without threat detection inside backups, organizations may unknowingly restore infected snapshots, triggering reinfection.
Why Point-in-Time Scanning Is Not Enough?
Threat intelligence is not static. New ransomware hashes and indicators are published daily, often after an attack occurs.
This means:
A backup scanned yesterday may appear clean
The same backup may be identified as malicious tomorrow when new IOCs emerge
MITRE-aligned reality:
T1486 – Data Encrypted for Impact is often detected only after encryption completes
Early stages (credential access, lateral movement) may leave artifacts that become identifiable later
This is why continuous monitoring and historical rescanning are essential.
How Druva Threat Watch Addresses These Real World Risks?
Druva Threat Watch is designed specifically to handle these evolving attack patterns. Here is how it effectively handles these evolving attack patterns:
Continuous Post-Backup Scanning
Every completed and indexed backup is scanned automatically on a recurring cadence, ensuring newly created recovery points are evaluated quickly.
Retroactive Rescans on New Intelligence
When new IOCs are added:
Threat Watch automatically rescans historical backups
Previously unknown infections can be identified retroactively
This directly addresses delayed detection scenarios common in ransomware campaigns.
Automated Containment to Prevent Reinfection
When Threat Watch detects IOC matches:
Infected snapshots are auto-quarantined
Alerts notify security and backup teams immediately via SIEM Notification, Email Alert and In-App Alerts.
This prevents one of the most common recovery failures: restoring from compromised backups.
Benefits to Security Admin and Backup Admins
For Security Admins, Threat Watch delivers early threat visibility, defense-in-depth by extending threat detection into the backup layer, surfacing alerts through SIEM, email, and in-app notifications.
For Backup Admins, it removes guesswork by automatically quarantining infected snapshots and clearly identifying safe recovery points.
By combining continuous monitoring with automatic containment, Threat Watch ensures ransomware is detected and isolated before recovery begins, reducing reinfection risk and accelerating confident recovery.
Threat Intelligence Sources
Threat Watch consumes intelligence from:
Google Mandiant
CISA
ReconX Labs (Druva Security Research)
BYO IOCs
Operational and Audit Readiness
Threat Watch produces detailed reports:
Threat Scan Summary reports
Snapshot-level IOC detection records
Audit and compliance logs
These support post-incident reviews, regulatory requirements, and recovery validation.
Threat Watch and Threat Hunting: Designed to Work Together
Threat Watch provides continuous detection and automated containment
Threat Hunting enables targeted, on-demand investigation when incidents are suspected or confirmed
Together, they support both proactive monitoring and reactive incident response. For more information, check out this blog.
Conclusion
Ransomware targeting infrastructure workloads is no longer a question of if, but when. Attackers leverage valid credentials, lateral movement, and automation to spread quickly, often contaminating backups before detection.
Druva Threat Watch brings continuous threat visibility and historical validation into the recovery plane, ensuring organizations can recover safely, confidently, and without reinfection across your environments.
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If you are a Druva customer, please reach out to Druva Support or your Account Executive.