In this post, we focus on MSP cyber security, including main challenges, threats and practices. Read on to find out:

• Why an MSP should care about cyber security
• Which threats you need to counter the most
• How to protect your and clients' data and infrastructures from possible failures

MSP Security: Why is it important?

Managed service providers (MSPs) are usually connected to the environments of multiple clients. This fact alone makes an MSP a desired target for hackers. The opportunity to rapidly develop a cyberattack and spread the infections across a large number of organizations makes MSP security risks difficult to overestimate. A single vulnerability in an MSP solution can become a reason for failures in numerous infrastructures resulting in data leakage or loss. Apart from the loss of valuable assets, serious noncompliance fines can be applied to organizations that become victims of cyberattacks.

An MSP that fails to build and support proper security can not only be forced to pay significant funds. The main point here is the reputational loss that you usually cannot recover. Thus, the risk is not only financial: failed cybersecurity can cost you future profits and the very existence of your organization.

Main MSP cybersecurity threats in 2023

Although the types of online cybersecurity threats for MSPs are countless, some threats are more frequent than others. Below is the list of the most common threats that an MSP security system should be able to identify and counter.

Phishing

Phishing can be considered an outdated cyberattack method, especially when you pay attention to the competencies and possibilities of contemporary hackers. However, phishing is still remaining among the top data threats for individuals and organizations worldwide.

Simplicity is key here: a phishing email is easy to construct and then send to thousands of potential victims, including MSPs. And even if a hacker has a more thorough approach and creates individual, targeted emails to trick organizations' employees or clients, the phishing tactics still do not require much effort to conduct an attack.

Ransomware

With hundreds of millions of attacks occurring every year, ransomware has been an emerging threat for SMBs and enterprise organizations for at least a decade. Ransomware is malware that sneakily infiltrates an organization's environment and then starts encrypting all the data at reach. After a significant number of files is encrypted, the ransomware displays a notification about that fact along with a ransom demand. Many organizations have fallen victim to ransomware. The Colonial Pipeline incident in the US was also a ransomware case.

A Managed Service Provider must pay special attention to this threat as the connection between an MSP and clients can cause rapid strain spreading and global data loss inside the entire client network.

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks

Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are also “old-school” simple and effective hacking tactics used since the mid 90's. The point of a DoS or DDoS attack is to cause an abnormal load on an organization's infrastructure (a website, a network, a data centre, etc.), resulting in a system failure. A DoS attack most probably won't be the reason for data loss or damage, but the service downtime can become a source of operational discomfort and financial and reputational losses posing risks for the future of an organization.

A DoS attack is conducted with the use of hacker-controlled devices (bot networks) that send enormous data amounts to a target organization's nodes and overload processing performance capabilities and/or bandwidth. Again, a DoS attack on an MSP can then be spread to clients' environments and result in a system-wide failure.

Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks

This type of cyber threat is a bit trickier and more complicated to conduct than direct infrastructure strikes. A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack involves a hacker intruding, for example, into a network router or a computer, aiming to intercept traffic. After a successful malware intrusion, a hacker can monitor data traffic going through the compromised node and steal sensitive data, such as personal information, credentials, payment or credit card information, etc. This can also be a tactic suitable for corporate espionage and theft of business know-hows or commercial secrets.

Risky zones for becoming a victim of MITM attacks are, for example, public Wi-Fi networks. A public network rarely has an adequate level of protection, thus becoming an easy nut to crack for a hacker. The data stolen from the traffic of careless users can then be sold or used in other cyberattacks.

Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking is a relatively new cyber threat type that emerged along with the crypto mining boom. Willing to increase profits from crypto mining, cybercriminals came up with malicious agents that intrude on computers and then start using CPU and/or GPU processing power to mine cryptocurrencies, which then get transferred directly to anonymous wallets. Cybercriminals can get increased profits because they don't need to pay electricity bills for their mining equipment in this illegal case.

MSP solutions are desired targets for crypto-jackers. Such a solution can be a single point of access to the networks of multiple organizations with all the servers and other computing devices at their disposal. Thus, one cyberattack can bring a lot of resources for crypto-jacking to a hacker.

8 practices cybersecurity MSP organizations should use

Regarding the frequency and progressing level of threats, an MSP must have an up-to-date reliable cybersecurity system. The 8 MSP cyber security practices below can help you reduce the risk of protection failures.

Credential compromise and targeted attacks prevention

A managed service provider should know that their infrastructure will be among the priority targets for cyberattacks and build security systems appropriately. Hardening vulnerable nodes and tools for remote access (for example, virtual private networks) is the first step to prevent compromising credentials and the entire environment as a result.

Scan the system for potential vulnerabilities regularly, even when your daily production software and web apps are online. Additionally, consider setting standard protection measures for remote desktop (RDP) services connected to the web. That is how you can reduce the impact of phishing campaigns, password brute-forcing and other targeted attacks.

Cyber hygiene

Promoting cyber hygiene among staff members and clients is an efficient yet frequently underestimated way to enhance MSP cybersecurity. Although users and even admins tend to assume that relying on usual IT protection measures is enough, a Global Risks Report of the World Economic Forum states that by 2022, 95% of all cyber security issues involve human error. An employee or a user that simply remains unaware of a threat is the most significant threat for digital environments.

Ensuring that staff and clients know which emails not to open, which links not to click and which credentials not to give out regardless of reasons, is one of the most efficient cybersecurity measures for any organization, including MSPs. Staff education and promotion of a thorough approach towards cyberspace among clients requires much less investment compared to other protection measures and solutions but can alone noticeably boost an organization's cybersecurity level.

Anti-malware and anti-ransomware software

The need for specialized software that can prevent malware from infiltrating the IT environment (and hunt malicious agents out of the system as well) may seem inevitable. However, organizations sometimes tend to postpone integrating such solutions in their systems. That's not an option for an MSP.

A managed service provider is the first line of defence for clients, and software for tracking malware and ransomware must be integrated and properly updated in an MSP cybersecurity circuit. The corporate license for such software can be costly, but this is when the investment pays off in safe data, stable production availability and a clean reputation among the worldwide IT community.

Networks separation

Like any SMB or enterprise organization, an MSP should care about internal network security not less than about the external perimeter. Configuring internal firewalls and separating virtual spaces of departments can require time and effort, but a protected internal network poses a serious challenge for an intruder to go through the barriers undetected. Additionally, even if internal firewalls fail to stop a hacker at once, early threat detection can give an organization more time to react and successfully counter a cyberattack.

Thorough offboarding workflows

To ensure stable production and provide appropriate performance, MSPs use third-party software solutions. Whenever a solution is no longer required due to, for example, a workflow optimization, that outdated solution should be properly excluded from an organization's environment. To avoid leaving undetected backdoors, the offboarding process must be set up to completely wipe the solution's elements out of the infrastructure.

The same recommendation is relevant to the accounts of former employees and clients. Such an unused account can remain below the radar of an IT team, giving a hacker additional space to maneuver both when planning and conducting a cyberattack.

Zero trust and the principle of least privilege

Zero trust and the principle of least privilege (aka PoLP) are two cybersecurity methods that an MSP should apply. Both methods are called to limit access to critical data and system elements as much as possible.

PoLP prescribes granting every user inside an environment only access that is required to do their job well. In other words, any access that can be prohibited without harming an employee's efficiency or a client's comfort should be prohibited.

The zero trust method is, in turn, focused on authorization. Here, every user and machine must authenticate before getting access to known resources and actions. Additionally, zero trust can help increase network segmentation efficiency.

These two methods don't exclude or replace each other and can be used simultaneously to boost MSP cybersecurity even further.

Multi-factor authentication

Nowadays, a password that is considered reliable may still not be enough to protect accounts and data from unauthorized access. Adding a two-factor authentication to an MSP infrastructure can strengthen the protection of the entire environment, as the password alone won't be enough to log in. Two-factor authentication (2FA) requires a user to confirm a login with an SMS code or another authorization phrase before they can access their account, change data and manipulate functions. The additional code is generated randomly at the moment of login and has a limited relevance period, thus becoming challenging for a hacker to retrieve and use on time.

Non-stop threat monitoring

Threats are evolving to become more sophisticated and to break through security layers more efficiently. Thus, 24/7 active monitoring of the environment can help you detect breaches and vulnerabilities before they cause unfixable failures. With up-to-date monitoring software, you can have more control over your IT environment and more time to appropriately react to cyberattacks.

Backup for MSP: Your safety net when all else fails

The non-stop intense development of cyberthreats means that sooner or later, a hacker can find a key to any security system. The only solution that can help you save your organization's data and infrastructure after a major data loss incident is backup.

A backup is a copy of data that is stored independently. In case the original data at the main site is lost after a breach, a backup can be used for recovery. The amount of data to generate, process and store to ensure the proper functioning of an organization makes manual and legacy backups unsuitable for the MSP reality.

With the contemporary data protection solution, you can smoothly integrate backup and recovery workflows into your and your client's IT infrastructures. The all-in-one solution enables automated data backup, replication and recovery on schedule or on demand. The solution by NAKIVO is easy to administer, has built-in security features (ransomware protection, two-factor authentication, role-based access control) and a cost-efficient per-workload subscription model.

Conclusion

In 2023 and beyond, managed service providers are bound to remain desired targets for cyberattacks from phishing, and DoS-attack attempts to ransomware infection and crypto jacking. To ensure MSP cybersecurity, such organizations should:

• Create protection systems working against targeted attacks and malware,
• Promote cyber hygiene among employees and clients,
• Apply network segmentation, PoLP and non-stop monitoring to the entire environment.

Additionally, MSPs might want to consider integrating multi-factor authentication and thorough offboarding workflows for solutions and employees. However, a functional MSP backup is the only solid way to maintain control over an organization's data in case of a major data loss incident.

The post MSP Cybersecurity: What You Should Know appeared first on Datafloq.

However, organizations became vulnerable right after applying e-commerce tools and practices. E-commerce is, in many ways, about operating sensitive data including personal details and financial information. This fact poses specific and strict demands to cybersecurity in e-commerce: whenever a site falls victim to a global incident or clients doubt the protection of their data, the organization's reputation decreases and it loses profits.

Below, we explain what e-commerce data is, which e-commerce threats are the most relevant in 2023, and how to protect customer data and online transactions from theft or loss.

What Is E-Commerce Data?

As mentioned above, the activities of e-commerce websites are data-driven: to operate properly and enable online services, organizations set workflows to gather, control, store, and use different types of data. Most frequently, the volume of that data is large and the operations are intense, requiring appropriate storage and performance capabilities from an organization's IT infrastructure. Consequently, before coming up with e-commerce cybersecurity approaches, organizations should know which data is crucial to enable production.

Here is the list of e-commerce data that an organization should prioritize protecting against fraud or loss:

• Product catalogs: The data about products with their prices, descriptions, photos, numbers, location, and other related details falls into this category. Catalogs are essential to enable day-to-day sales and ensure customer comfort and satisfaction.
• Customer data: This category includes personal data of an organization's clients, such as names, contact info, credit card data, order history, preferences, and other sensitive data. A case of loss or theft of customer data results in compliance issues and reputational damage. Sometimes, a personal data loss episode can become the reason for an organization to shut down completely.
• Sales records: The data about sales empowers both internal processes of, for example, effective analytics or inventory management and external operations such as tax reports or financial audits. Sales data can include customer info, payment data, and transaction history.
• Website content: This category is for all the necessary data items constructing and enabling the e-commerce website's functioning: images, web page text content, product descriptions, links, files, and other resources. Whenever the website data is compromised or lost, online operations may become interrupted or shut down, causing infrastructure downtime, customer dissatisfaction, and income decrease.

E-Commerce Threats: Most Common Data Protection Vulnerabilities

When you know the types of e-commerce data and their importance, understanding the threats to them is the next step to building an efficient system of online transaction and customer data protection.

The list can be common for e-commerce organizations and includes both internal and external threats. Knowing what your protection must counter can help you pick appropriate security measures and solutions.

Theme Code Editing

When adjusting the theme code with custom edits, you can make a small mistake that later results in interface errors or business interruptions. A thorough code testing algorithm is a crucial element of the protection system. Additionally, you might want to consider the data recovery system enabling the rollback to the properly working code with minimum downtime.

Third-Party Integrations

While organizations build online e-commerce platforms, they probably integrate third-party solutions in their IT environments to enable customer interactions and transactions for sales. Every third-party app is a source of vulnerabilities, threatening sensitive data and infrastructure stability. Only a third-party app that you can test and monitor appropriately after every update should be integrated.

Human Factor

Among all data loss or theft reasons, human errors are the most common ones. An employee deleting critical data by accident or letting malicious actors inside an organization's infrastructure due to their successful social-engineering schemes are examples. Inaccurate CSV import creation and usage is another human-caused error worth mentioning. Include measures to protect your e-commerce resources from human errors when considering a comprehensive data protection strategy.

Outdated Employee Accounts

When an organization has numerous employees, abandoned accounts of those who no longer occupy their positions will pop up sooner or later. Usually, such accounts remain out of the IT department's scope, meaning that security updates don't apply to them. Thus, accounts of former employees become weak links in the chain of e-commerce protection, threatening not only the data but also production stability.

Cyber Breach and Ransomware Attacks

E-commerce data containing sensitive info such as customer data, credit card information, or payment records is the first target for cyber breaches and ransomware attacks. As hacking tactics and ransomware strains evolve with time, regular anti-malware protection updates and active monitoring are vital to prevent breaches.

Malicious Insider

The threat of a malicious insider is frequently overlooked despite being probably the most impactful. A malicious insider can be, for example, a financially motivated employee stealing your organization's client database for competitors. Such insiders are dangerous because they can bypass the security systems they know, and the breaches they create can remain under security radars for long amounts of time.

Best Practices to Prevent Data Breach

With the knowledge about the data to protect and the threats to counter, you can take appropriate measures and pick the right software to protect data more efficiently. The best practices mentioned below aim to help you find the correct focus points when building your e-commerce cybersecurity system.

Data Encryption

Whenever you try to figure out how to protect online transactions and e-commerce data, encryption is the first obvious solution. Nowadays, leaving the data unencrypted means voluntarily exposing your records to a third party. Your data should be encrypted both “in flight” (during any transfer) and “at rest” (throughout the retention period).

Reputable Payment Services

A payment service integrated in your organization's e-commerce workflows is among the key elements for generating profits online. All payment services process sensitive data by purpose and by design, but those services can be different in terms of performance and safety. When setting up e-commerce systems, you might want to avoid saving funds on the payment service because the cost of a data breach will be significantly higher for your budget and reputation.

Reliable Passwords

Using complicated passwords to increase your security resilience is a universal recommendation that has been relevant for decades. Passwords like “Johnny070489” or “qwertyasdf” won't provide any protection to your corporate accounts and databases because modern hacking tools can crack such passwords with little to no effort. A reliable password consists of 8 or more characters, including capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and special symbols.

Here is an example of a reliable password: “q2o54B9!SM@l9&.”

Multi-Factor Authentication

Even the strongest passwords can be brute forced or compromised, threatening customer information security. The solution is to add a protection layer to the login process by implementing multi-factor authentication. An employee will have to provide an authentication code (received in SMS or Google Authenticator, for example) in addition to the password before receiving access to the sensitive data.

Responsible Data Retention

Consider storing only the data you need and only throughout the required period. Choose the data management solution that can help you automate data retention and streamline data management workflows. By doing so, you can avoid possible compliance issues and keep your security efforts focused on the relevant data.

Continuous Monitoring

For any organization involved in the e-commerce field, threat sources can be everywhere from browser links to corporate emails. To keep systems protected and to timely react to cyberattacks, you need to have a 24/7 active security monitoring solution implemented in your IT environment. When you are quickly notified about attack attempts, you can either counter them entirely or significantly mitigate the consequences even if a successful breach takes place.

Thorough Testing

IT environments in general and security systems in particular are evolving along with the development of threats and hacking tactics. After implementing new solutions or updating existing workflows, you should test your data protection solution to reveal and patch vulnerabilities before hackers get the opportunity to exploit them. Prepare a testing checklist highlighting the critical security points, and don't apply updates to production until you are sure they provide the required data protection.

Employee Training

As human errors are among the most common reasons for a data breach, you can significantly boost data protection by ensuring your organization's staff members' awareness about cybersecurity threats. Trained employees are less likely to click on a phishing link in an email or to become victims of a social-engineering scheme, thus posing an additional challenge for malicious actors trying to bypass your e-commerce cybersecurity systems.

Methods to Improve Data Security: The Importance of Data Backups

Implementing security solutions to effectively counter ecommerce threats is the priority for organizations regardless of their industry and size. However, to keep control over critical data in case of a successful cyberattack on your infrastructure, you might want to integrate automated backup workflows. A modern backup and recovery solution, including NAS backup, can help you preserve ecommerce data from loss, thus saving your budget and reputation.

One effective approach for ensuring the safety of customer data and online transactions in ecommerce is to back up to Backblaze B2 using the backup and recovery solution provided by NAKIVO, which includes backup verification, ensuring the combination of a modern data protection solution and an advanced cloud storage offers a powerful and reliable safeguarding mechanism for protecting sensitive information and ensuring the resilience of online business operations.

Conclusion

Ecommerce data such as product catalogs, customer info, sales records and website content must be protected to ensure the proper functioning of an organization, avoid compliance issues and maintain reputation among clients. To protect customer data and online transactions from threats like human errors, third-party integration vulnerabilities, malicious insiders and ransomware attacks, organizations need to set up protection systems that offer:

• Data encryption
• Trusted payment services
• Reliable passwords
• Multi Factor Authentication
• Data retention policies
• Continuous security monitoring and testing
• Employee training

You should also implement an advanced data protection strategy that allows you to safeguard data by performing automated and regular backups. By storing backups in the cloud, you can ensure data availability and reduce downtime in case of a security breach or interruption.

The post E-Commerce Cybersecurity: How to Protect Customer Data and Online Transactions appeared first on Datafloq.

In this post, we explain:

• Virtualization security definition
• Main virtualization security issues
• VM security best practices

What Is Virtualized Security and How Can It Help?

Virtualized security (aka security virtualization) refers to software solutions and measures specifically created and applied to protect virtualized environments. Unlike usual, static hardware-based network security on physical switches, firewalls, and routers, virtualization security is all about virtual nodes.

Organizations can significantly boost their IT infrastructure security using virtualized servers, networks, and desktops. Virtualized servers, for example, help isolate sensitive data with the appropriate network segmentation, turning the internal network into a labyrinth for intruders. Virtualized networks simplify traffic management, and virtualized desktops streamline endpoint security and turn virtualization into an effective security tool.

Virtualization Security Issues: Main Threats for Virtualized Environments

Some of the most dangerous virtualization security risks remain similar to physical environments. However, virtualization-specific issues arise when an organization uses virtual workloads to enable or support production and service availability. The list of main problems for VM security in particular, and for the entire environment's stability, in general, can include:

• External threats
• Insider threats
• Malware and ransomware
• VM sprawl
• VM snapshot storing

External Threats

A bad external actor is the standard threat that comes to mind when thinking of IT challenges. That actor can be, for instance, a lone hacker attempting to breach an organization's protection system for fun or a paid professional group aiming for corporate espionage. These and other external attack cases are challenges that IT security specialists reasonably prioritize.

Insider Threats

In this case, the risk is from within the organization, not outside. And just like external cybercriminals are the obvious danger sources that every security expert aims to counter, malicious insiders are invisible and frequently ignored. Neglecting the threat results in the absence of security measures. Combine this with the fact that such insiders can remain undetected until they commit an attack, and you receive a perfect storm for any IT infrastructure.

Malware and Ransomware

Viruses, adware, spyware, and other malware have been around for a long time. Nowadays, malware remains among the most significant threats to individuals and organizations. However, one malware kind stands out: ransomware.

Ransomware is malware that sneakily infiltrates the IT environment, encrypts the data at reach, and starts demanding a ransom for decryption keys. Throughout 2021 and 2022, over 1.1 billion ransomware attacks occurred worldwide, which means that any organization must have a well-prepared plan to counter ransomware and mitigate the successful consequences of an attack if it occurs.

VM Sprawl

This case is typical for virtual infrastructures, and the easy creation of new virtual machines is the reason here. IT specialists can benefit from the flexibility of virtualized environments and create VMs, for example, to test new apps, features, or tools before deploying them on production machines. Then, such test VMs are forgotten and exist in a virtual environment.

The threat here is that each of these “abandoned” virtual machines is not updated correctly regarding software and security. While remaining vulnerable, a VM has a higher chance of becoming an entry point for a cyberattack.

VM Snapshot Storing

Although regular VM snapshot deletion is included in VMware security best practices, organizations tend to keep those point-in-time copies of virtual machines for much longer than experts recommend. The worst thing is when you treat a snapshot as a backup. A snapshot relies on a virtual machine's disk, meaning that you won't be able to restore a VM's data from a snapshot if an error occurs above the VM's level.

Additionally, snapshots require significant storage space. When kept without correct control and configuration, snapshots of a single VM can fill the entire disk and cause a global system failure.

Virtualization Best Practices for Improved Security

Threats are always there, and organizations have to react adequately and quickly. Efficient security systems built around virtualized workloads are a solution to keep your organization's data and production resources under control. Below is a list of three methods for securing a virtual machine and strengthening overall infrastructure protection.

Least Privilege for Users

The principle of least privilege (aka PoLP) is a commonly known concept in IT. To implement the principle, administrators minimize the range of actions that users can perform and the locations that they can access. The access rights are set at the minimum level required for employees to fulfill their duties. Applying the role-based access control model can streamline implementing the principle of least privilege in your organization's environment.

Multi-Layer Security

Another tip to boost security in virtualization is to avoid relying on a single protection measure or solution. Even the most advanced solutions working alone most probably won't be enough to provide efficient security. You can and should have antivirus software installed on VMs, firewalls configured, networks segmented, and active threat monitoring up and running, among other custom practices.

Saving time and effort by postponing the creation of a complementary multi-layer protection system can result in a global failure. Recovering from an IT disaster can cost you much more than investing enough resources to organize and regularly update your security measures.

Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR)

Unfortunately, no virtualization security system designed to prevent and counter threats can be perfect. Combined and thoroughly organized protection can dissuade less skilled hackers or give you more time to properly react to cyberattack. However, 100% protection is not possible. Therefore, virtualization security should be part of a comprehensive protection plan. This plan should include prevention as well as response tools to help with successful recovery following an incident.

Having the right Hyper-V or VMware, Microsoft 365 backup solution at hand is the only way to keep control over your data and infrastructure when the main site is down following an attack or a disaster. Modern backup solutions can help you create and refresh VM backups automatically, schedule data protection activities and plan disaster recovery sequences for various emergency cases.

Virtualized Security – Conclusion

Virtualization security is a set of tools, techniques, and activities to protect virtual IT environments from threats such as external and internal attacks, malware, ransomware, VM sprawl, and snapshot issues. You can use the principle of least privilege to set up a reliable protection system for your organization's environment. Also, consider establishing multi-layered security using such measures as segmented networks, configured firewalls, virtualized routers, special antivirus, and active monitoring solutions.

Still, the most reliable choice to protect your virtual infrastructure is to implement a backup and disaster recovery system. Advanced all-in-one solutions enable you to automate backup and disaster recovery workflows, ensuring your control over VM data even when the main site is down. Advanced DR sequences can help you minimize infrastructure downtime and support production continuity, saving your organization's reputation, assets and resources.

FAQ

Q: What is virtualization security?

A: Virtualization security refers to the measures and best practices implemented to protect data, applications, and virtualized environments from potential security risks and threats. It involves securing the underlying virtualization infrastructure, virtual machines, and the data stored and transmitted within virtualized systems.

Q: Why is virtualization security important?

A: Virtualization security is important because it ensures data and applications' integrity, confidentiality, and availability in virtualized environments. It helps prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, malware attacks, and other security vulnerabilities that could impact the stability and security of the virtual infrastructure.

Q: What are some virtualization security best practices?

A: Some virtualization security best practices include implementing robust access controls, regularly patching and updating virtualization software and hypervisors, encrypting sensitive data, segregating virtual networks, monitoring and auditing virtualized environments, conducting vulnerability assessments, and providing security training for IT staff.

Q: How can organizations protect their virtualized data and applications?

A: Organizations can protect their virtualized data and applications by implementing a multi-layered security approach. This includes deploying firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, antivirus software, and security monitoring tools specifically designed for virtual environments. Regular backups, disaster recovery planning, and secure network configurations are also essential.

Q: Can virtualization security impact performance?

A: Virtualization security can impact performance, but proper implementation and optimization can minimize adverse effects. It is crucial to strike a balance between security measures and performance requirements. Using efficient security solutions, properly configuring virtualization settings, and monitoring performance metrics can help maintain optimal performance levels while ensuring robust security for virtualized environments.

The post Virtualized Security Best Practices: Protecting Your Data and Applications appeared first on Datafloq.

With over 345 million users in 2022, Microsoft 365 suite is a market-dominant team collaboration solution. Individuals and organizations prefer Microsoft services for the all-in-one functional suite, speed and comfort of data exchange, and advanced capabilities. However, the security of valuable data that an organization produces, transfers, and stores using Microsoft 365 cloud apps and features is still a concern for IT specialists.

Microsoft uses the shared responsibility model, which states that the company is obliged to provide full availability and uptime for its cloud services. On the other hand, protecting data that the client stores and generates in Microsoft 365 is entirely the client's responsibility. Furthermore, Microsoft does not provide native functions and tools for Microsoft 365 backup, thus clients don't have other choice but to look for a third-party solution.

In this post, we explain the Office 365 backup solution requirements that an organization should consider to fulfill their data protection needs. Read on to discover the key criteria for picking a Microsoft 365 backup solution.

Assessing Backup Needs

Being a multifunctional team collaboration service, Microsoft 365 assists organizations with generating, exchanging, and storing data items of different types. The service enables creating and editing of items that vary from text documents in Office and emails in Outlook to large databases and other valuable files in SharePoint, OneDrive, or Teams.

Therefore, the first important consideration point when picking a solution to back up Microsoft 365 is the types of data you need to protect. Not all third-party solutions are capable of backing up, for example, Microsoft Teams data. You might want to check the solution's capabilities thoroughly before starting to integrate it into your IT infrastructure.

The second point to think over is the recovery point objective (RPO). An RPO defines how much data an organization can withstand losing in case of a disruptive event. This allows you to determine how often you need to back up your data to minimize data loss. Tighter RPOs mean more frequent backups which can cause higher loads on your network and hardware. Additionally, storing multiple recovery points to achieve flexible recovery can increase storage space consumption.

The recovery time objective (RTO) is another consideration when figuring out backup needs for your organization. RTO refers to the maximum downtime that your organization can tolerate when a data loss incident causes operations to stop. Tighter RTO requires more hardware performance and network bandwidth enabling swift recovery.

Next, regardless of your preferred storage type (on-premise or cloud storage backup), you need to know the volume of data to protect. Depending on the size and industry, organizations may require storage volumes varying from terabytes to petabytes for storing their backup data.

Last but not least, you need to consider your organization's retention policy. Data retention can have certain internal requirements as well as compliance regulations to keep up with. For example, an organization may be obliged to store sensitive data backups in encrypted storage destinations with reliable access limitation and thorough authentication control.

Evaluating Microsoft 365 Backup Solutions

Now that you know your organization's detailed requirements for Microsoft 365 backup, you can proceed with evaluating the solutions available on the market. The key considerations when choosing between Office 365 backup solutions can be:

• Cost of data protection
• Scalability
• Management complexity level
• Additional backup data security
• Customer support for complicated cases

Cost and Budget

Organizations tend to postpone integrating data protection solutions in their IT infrastructures due to cost concerns. However, you might want to compare the price of a solution and value of Microsoft 365 data: mostly, the data to protect has a higher value for an organization. Additionally, a modern solution for Office 365 data backup can be significantly more affordable due to the quite flexible licensing.

Scalability and Flexibility

Will the Office 365 backup tool picked today be relevant and sufficient after the organization expands? How flexible are the features and functions? Can the solution fit the existing IT environment or will it require additional expenses to reconfigure hardware, software, and workflows in production?

In-depth customization, easy scalability, and flexibility are a must-have for an effective data protection solution in general and for a Microsoft 365 backup solution in particular. An adequate solution not only suits your infrastructure's type, size, and data at a certain moment but also can be properly adjusted when your organizational needs change.

Ease of Use and Management

Another key element is the solution's UI and management simplicity. An intuitive interface means that employees can master the solution quickly. Additionally, besides saving time and effort on employee training, the convenience of the solution can boost the effectiveness of backup and recovery workflows.

Security and Compliance

The protection of sensitive data is tightly connected with legal regulations and compliance requirements, pushing organizations to find suitable approaches to storing backups. After protecting the data by creating a backup, an organization should consider backup security. Modern Microsoft 365 backup solutions have advanced security features that restrict access to backup copies and make reaching the data inside backup repositories a challenge for third parties.

For example, you might want your Office 365 data backup solution to be able to encrypt the data both during transmission to a backup repository and throughout the entire retention period. Additional authentication measures and access control features can increase data security from both external and internal threats, as well as from accidental deletion.

Customer Support

This point can be overlooked when conducting an Office 365 backup solutions comparison to analyze their pros and cons. Professional customer support that is always available means that your IT specialists can get instant help while installing and using the solution. Consider checking the reviews and contacting the vendor you plan to make your backup solution provider.

Conclusion

Microsoft's shared responsibility model and absence of native backup tools demands that you implement a third-party solution for Microsoft 365 backup to ensure the safety and availability of your organization's data. Having a detailed view and clear understanding of your data protection needs and expectations is critical when picking a solution. Consider the data types you need to back up, your RPO, RTO, and storage needs.

Then, evaluate a solution's price, scalability and flexibility, use and management simplicity, and security features. Don't overlook customer support as that is an important part of your interaction with the backup solution provider when needed.

The post How to Select the Right Microsoft 365 Backup Solution appeared first on Datafloq.

What is a Cyber Attack?

In a broad sense, a cyberattack is the use of digital instruments to, for example, gain unauthorized access to IT environments, cause disruption, hardware malfunction, and corrupt or steal data.The type of instruments used to conduct an attack and the goals that the initiator pursues may vary, but the principle remains unchanged: A cyberattack is an attempt to intrude, damage, or disrupt digital or physical infrastructures with the use of software.

Cyber Security Threats by Type

Not all cases of cyber security breaches are the same. Three main categories of cyber security threats include cybercrimes, cyberattacks, and cyberterrorism. We will highlight the differences between them now.

Cybercrime

Cybercrime includes the actions of individuals or organized groups who use digital instruments to attack computers or whole IT systems with the intention of financial profit and causing disruption. The most spectacular example of cybercriminal activity is the creation and spread of ransomware.The frequency and danger of ransomware attacks have been growing in past years, so solid ransomware protection is vital for corporate, personal, and any other critical data.

Cyberattacks

A cyberattack in its narrow sense is a category of cybercrime. Cybercriminals are mostly driven by financial goals or just having fun with casual users who are unaware of security breaches in their systems.Coordinated cyberattacks conducted either by individuals or organized groups, however, might have motivators other than direct profit: politics, corporate and state espionage, and gaining unfair competitive advantage for businesses are primary motivators here. Hackers paid by a particular company to intrude into a competitor's IT environment and collect confidential data about intellectual property can serve as an example here.

Cyberterrorism

Cyberterrorists are criminals and attackers. Why are they distinguished as a separate threat category? Unlike regular criminals and organized hacker groups, terrorists target vital objects of public infrastructure to cause panic or fear among citizens.Cyberterrorists aim to disrupt the stable functioning of governmental services, banks, hospitals, power grid, and so on. Most frequently, the actions of cyberterrorists may be defined as elements of a cyber war. However, that is not quite correct.

Cyberwar: Science Fiction or Reality?

Many think that a cyberwar is either a fictional concept or something that much of humanity seems to expect in the relatively distant future.

Fortunately, a full-scale cyberwar has not occurred so far. However, governments are analyzing cyberwar concepts, and some elements of a nextgen military conflict have already been tested in action.

But still, how can we define a cyberwar? The word “cyberwarfare” can fit the use of digital means like viruses and hacking software by one state to attack the vital computer systems of another state to cause disruption, destruction, and even loss of life.

Although there have been no confirmed cases of cyberattacks directly resulting in death yet, the use of computer programs by state-affiliated structures against the digital environments of a political rival to gain military advantage or achieve other goals has been around for years.One of the first known examples of a war going beyond the use of regular military force and entering cyberspace is the series of cyberattacks conducted during the short military conflict between Russia and Georgia in August 2008.Allegedly, Russian hackers took control over key sections of the Georgian web by rerouting traffic to Russian and Turkish servers and blocking or diverting the rerouted traffic there. This was the first publicly known case of cyberattacks synchronized with offensive army operations to achieve military goals.Another spectacular example of a cyberwar is the case of the Stuxnet worm, which is considered to be a specialized cyberweapon. That software is said to have been created by the USA and Israel to target Iran, though there is no direct proof of governmental involvement in the development of the worm. Stuxnet is remarkable for being the first-of-a-kind known software that was purposely created to damage critical physical infrastructure.

More precisely, Stuxnet was created to cause a malfunction in the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) used to automate electromechanical processes including the control of gas centrifuges for separating nuclear material.

Stuxnet was confirmed to have compromised the PLCs used in the Iranian nuclear program equipment and caused damage by accelerating the centrifuges' spinning and destroying them that way.Regarding cyberwar, one can only understand that the use of digital technologies, computers, and networks to gain an advantage over enemy military forces and rival states is not a hypothetical opportunity or fictional concept anymore.

Cyberwar became a reality more than a decade ago. People not connected to the creation of cyberweapons can see only the tip of the iceberg.

Ways to Bypass IT Cyber Security

The multi-level complexity of IT infrastructures, protocols, connections, among other features, gives cybercriminals the chance to create different types of hacking tools and strategies to break into protected environments through the web.Those malicious tools and strategies generally fall into definable categories.

Malware

The variety of malware that hackers use to bypass digital security measures continues to expand.The most common malicious software types include:

• Viruses: self-replicating programs that attach themselves to clean files and spread across IT systems to infect nodes with malicious codes.
• Trojans: malware pretending to be regular software applications. Users unknowingly install trojans to their systems, and then unpacked malware codes start corrupting, deleting, or stealing data.
• Adware: software created for advertising purposes. Adware can be used to spread malware codes as well.
• Botnets: networks of infected computers used by hackers to perform actions online without the legitimate user's awareness and authorization.
• Spyware: malware that infiltrates a system and starts snooping for sensitive data like passwords, email addresses, personal identification information, credit card numbers, among others.
• Ransomware: malware that encrypts user data and demands a ransom in exchange for the decryption key.

Hackers may rely on a single type or combine multiple types of malware and approaches to plan and conduct a cyberattack. The digital security systems designed to protect IT environments are multi-layered, so criminals mostly come up with hybrid cyberattack tools.

SQL Injection

A structured language query (SQL) injection is used to get access and control to steal sensitive data from databases.A hacker uncovers a vulnerability in a data-driven app, and then exploits that vulnerability to intrude malicious code into the database via the SQL statement. If the injection is successful, the hacker gets unauthorized access to the data contained in the compromised database.

Man-in-the-Middle Attack

This type of cyberattack is frequently underestimated by regular users and extensively exploited by hackers due to that.The approach is simple: a hacker injects a malicious code into the device or network they want to attack in order to intercept the data sent through the compromised device.The most common example of a man-in-the-middle attack is infecting public Wi-Fi routers with spyware and then waiting for careless users to send their sensitive data like credit card information through one of those compromised routers.Hackers can acquire thousands of personal data records with this approach, and later sell them on dedicated darknet platforms.

Phishing

Phishing is one of the most common tactics used to trick legitimate users and create a breach for malware to sneak into the target IT environment.A hacker packs malware into a legitimate file such as (but not only) a Microsoft Word document, WinRar or 7zip archive, picture, or link.After that, the infected file is attached, for example, to an email pretending to be official or familiar, and sent to a receiver who is unaware of the threat.The recipient opens the email, views the attachment, and lets the malware code in the environment despite all the protection measures taken to secure the organization's IT perimeter.

Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attack

Denial-of-Service and Distributed-Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are arguably the oldest cyber security threats that IT experts deal with. The idea of a DDoS attack is simple: a hacker aims to cause a service denial on a particular host or environment by sending an overwhelming volume of random data or requests to one of the nodes via the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).For instance, an enterprise system receives tens of thousands of newly registered users or millions of emails simultaneously. That means huge volumes of data that even high-end server hardware would be unable to process without performance lags.Most frequently, DoS attacks are conducted with the use of botnets – previously built networks of nodes that the hacker controls. A botnet can include hundreds or even thousands of devices that send millions of requests, files, or other data to the target server at the particular moment that the hacker defines. Due to the simultaneous activation of multiple computers to cause a critical node disruption, finding the DDoS attack source can be challenging.

Digital Security Delusions Causing Danger

In addition to the growing variety of potential cybersecurity threats and new system vulnerabilities bound to appear with the development of IT industries, several types of threats frequently remain out of sight.Even experienced IT security specialists need to be careful and vigilant regarding their approach towards digital security. The following delusions need to be taken into account:

The Danger Comes From the Outside

Many organizations falling victim to cyberattacks, losing data, and experiencing prolonged production downtime reasonably blame the outside hackers who break through the digital security of the organization's IT perimeter.IT security specialists should keep in mind that cybercriminals often try to involve a person from the inside of an organization to simplify the attack. The insider can be either unaware of the consequences or acting purposely, but the defense is the same: protection against cyber attacks and data theft must be designed to effectively counter both outside and inside threats.

We Know the Risks

You don't. The truth is, the attacker is always one step ahead of the defender. Just like generals always getting prepared for past wars, digital security measures can cover only the vulnerabilities that have been discovered so far.

Additionally, the probability of human error, especially on the part of system administrators or even CTOs, is always a random risk factor that can lead to the creation or exposition of weaknesses at any moment.

Consequently, countering every possible threat and closing all breaches with a guarantee of total security is unreal.

Attack Vectors are Covered

Cybercriminals are regularly coming up with new malware strains, updating old malicious codes, finding new targets, and more sophisticated infiltration approaches.Nowadays, Linux systems, Internet of Things (IoT) and operation technology (OT) devices, and cloud IT infrastructures in Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, and other environments can become cyberattack targets.“

Our Organization Isn't a Target”

Any organization or individual present online, either informing, providing services, or making products, can become the target of a cyberattack.It does not matter if the organization or person has commercial, non-commercial, or governmental origins and purposes. You never know a hacker's intention. Therefore, building an effective IT protection system is obligatory for any device and system with an enabled Internet connection.

What is Cyber Security?

Contemporary cyber security covers the entire set of practical measures applied to protect sensitive information and critical systems from digital attacks. According to cybersecurity experts from this expert roundup, an effective digital security approach ensures:

• Authorized access to data
• Data integrity
• Data availability
• Data theft prevention
• Proper hardware functioning
• IT infrastructure stability

To maximize the effectiveness of cyber protection measures, solutions able to protect the IT environment and data from both inside and outside threats must be implemented.Apart from reliable passwords, antiviruses and firewalls, there are other common practices that should not be neglected if you want to maximize your protection of sensitive data and avoid disruption.

Best Practices for Reliable Cyber Protection

The points below may seem to be basic requirements for ensuring against cyber attacks. However, these basic rules are most frequently forgotten. By applying common digital security practices, you can significantly enhance your IT infrastructure's resilience to cyber threats.End-User EducationAn uneducated computer operator is among the primary targets for hackers. When your colleagues are unaware of potentially dangerous online objects, then hackers can exploit the digital security breach open after a colleague's click on an untrustworthy link, email attachment, or browser ad.An educated operator is the most solid cyber security solution. Eliminating human errors entirely is beyond reality, but you can explain threats to colleagues and minimize the chance for accidental security breaches to appear that way.

Principle of Least Privilege

Regardless of whether your IT operators are aware of threats or not, the principle of least privilege (aka PoLP) should be kept for computer cyber security purposes. When you can prohibit an action inside the IT environment without preventing a person from doing their job well, that action should be prohibited.Thus, hackers won't be able to reach critical data after they gain access to a computer or account with a lower security level.Arguably the best strategy to keep the principle of least privilege is to rely on a role-based access model. Role-based access solutions enable you to configure permissions for particular groups of users.Then, you can manage the users in groups and give every user only suitable access rights. Without the need to configure accesses for every separate user, the probability of human error during configuration significantly decreases.

Digital Threat Monitoring Software

Revealing threats instantly after they appear is as important as the secure IT perimeter.When you have a cyberattack warning solution in place, the probability of a stealthy malware code injection can be drastically reduced. Moreover, when you are notified about an attack right after someone tries to conduct it, you can react instantly to prevent unwanted consequences before your cyber protection falls.

Data Backups

Usually, data is the most valuable asset, and organizations use digital security measures to prevent data loss. Successful cyberattacks mostly cause disruptions in IT environments and provoke the loss of data.When hackers bypass digital security systems and cause a data loss disaster, data backup is the only recovery option. Contemporary backup solutions enable you to back up and recover not only the data itself but also to rebuild the entire VM infrastructure directly from backups.Therefore, with an adequate backup strategy, you can minimize the downtime of your organization's services and avoid critical data losses.

Conclusion

A cyber attack is the use of digital tools via cyberspace with the aim to disable or damage hardware, gain additional computing resources for further attacks, steal, corrupt, or delete data. Hackers can have different purposes.For example, regular cybercriminals are usually driven by financial profits and focus on attacking careless individuals and business organizations. On the other hand, cyberterrorists mostly aim to cause panic or fear among citizens by causing disruptions in critical services and structures such as healthcare, banking, or the electric grid.As cybercriminals and cyberterrorists are remaining active and generating new approaches towards their illegal activities, cyberattacks can be a threat to any individual or organization. A cyberwar is not a myth but a part of reality, too.With malware strains spread out all over the web, the cyber security meaning for any IT environment is hard to overestimate.Reliable cyber protection is vital for businesses, public infrastructure systems, government services, and individuals who want to prevent data loss and theft.

To have a solid digital security system, you should:

• Remember that anyone can become a target of a cyberattack;
• Counter both insider and outsider threats;
• Make sure end-users know about the main malware intrusion channels;
• Follow the principle of least privilege (PoLP);
• Monitor your IT environment for malicious activity;
• Do regular backups;
• Avoid thinking that you have everything covered;
• Regularly update your security solutions.

The post Digital Threats and Countermeasures: How Close are We to a Cyberwar? appeared first on Datafloq.

Virtual Machine Gaming: Setup and Performance Boost

Virtualization creates many opportunities to optimize the use of hardware resources. That works not just organizations that build high-performance servers to run complex environments but regular people too. What if you want to use a virtual machine for gaming?

In short: that's possible. A gamer can use a virtual machine (VM) to run games with reasonable benefits over traditional PC gaming approaches. Virtual machines were designed to make hardware usage more convenient and flexible along with the boost in security. However, when you consider VM gaming, things become more complicated. The performance issue arises especially urgently when you want to run a resource-intensive game on a virtual machine.

In this post, we explain the benefits of using a VM for gaming. Read on to learn how to increase a VM's performance to play games more conveniently and pleasantly.

Why Use a Virtual Machine for Gaming?

Let's suppose that you have a workstation running several VMs for production purposes in your home office. Such rigs usually have powerful high-end hardware that you don't always use at a 100% load. You need your VMs running continuously to complete projects and be available any moment but building a different rig just to run games is not an option. In this case, creating another VM for gaming using the spare resources of your main hardware seems to be the best option.

Along with the use of hardware resources that you already have, using VMware for games can bring you other advantages. Configuring Hyper-V for gaming is also a way to consider and the benefits can remain the same.

Choose OS for Gaming

An OS is used to manage resources besides simply enabling the utilization of hardware and software installed. Various operating systems can have their own pros and cons in terms of resource usage, which can directly affect gaming performance. Based on the game you are going to play, you can install the most suitable OS on that gaming VM and get the best performance possible.

Another reason to use this advantage of VM gaming appears when you want to play old-school games. Titles released in the 90s or early 2000s, for example, do not always run on modern hardware or support latest Windows versions. You can install Windows 98 on a VM and enjoy the gaming classics of the past years on a high-end rig without wasting hours setting up emulators and drivers.

Keep Environments Secure

VMs are independent from each other, thus creating a security layer inside the IT environment. When you set up a separate VM for gaming, you can protect your main system from threats such as ransomware or viruses. In case some kind of malware sneaks into a gaming VM after certain software experiments, that malware remains isolated. You protect the host and other virtual machines from the infection, plus the infected VM can be quickly deleted and replaced with an identical one.

Easily Back Up VMs

A VM and a VM's virtual storage disk are files. A file can be copied and moved to a different location to enhance data safety. Thus, you can have a default copy of your gaming VM to use in case an incident renders the main virtual machine inoperable.

However, when you use virtual machines on VMware or Hyper-V for gaming, you might want to automate regular backup workflows and have control over your gaming data, such as game configurations, settings and saved game files. Modern backup and recovery solutions can give you that automation and control.

Minimize Downtime

A virtual machine is flexible and easy to move between hypervisors on various physical hardware. Whenever you need to redistribute the resources of a main workstation or reconfigure your environment, you can move your VM for gaming with all your games to a different device (a laptop, for example) and play games there while the main machine is busy or unavailable.

Additionally, when you use a modern data protection solution to back up your gaming VM, the same solution can help you recover a fully functional virtual machine in minutes. If your virtual machine for gaming gets infected with malware, or you go the wrong way while experimenting with configs, you can quickly recover a default VM and continue gaming.

Optimizing a VM for Gaming

When considering the use of a virtual machine for gaming, what impacts the gaming experience the most is performance. For sure, virtualized workloads can demand more hardware resources than usual gaming PCs to run games properly. Still, you can spend some time optimizing your gaming VM. In this case, your gameplay can become smoother, and the experience from gaming on a virtual machine might be significantly more pleasant.

Here is a list of hardware and software optimization tips that you can consider to optimize a VM for gaming.

1. Host a gaming VM on a Solid State Drive (SSD) whenever possible because SSD disks have noticeably higher read and write speeds than regular HDDs. It's even better if you can use high-speed NVMe SSDs that are faster than SATA drives by design.
2. Create a gaming VM with a fixed virtual hard disk (VHD).
3. Regardless of circumstances, don't apply encryption or compression to drivers on a gaming VM.
4. Have minimum 1 gigabyte RAM free as a spare resource on your host.
5. Defragment hard disks on the host. Defragmented disks exclude file scattering and boost overall performance.
6. Check the antivirus configs and ensure they don't conflict with the gaming VM's workflows.
7. When using Hyper-V for gaming, enable the Dynamic Memory feature on your gaming VM. Thus, that VM can have more RAM when necessary to run the game with more frames per second.
8. While gaming, try to run only the necessary operations on the host. Disabling the apps which are not critical within the environment can boost a game's performance on a gaming VM.
9. You can redistribute host resources to increase a gaming VM's performance and play high-end games when the main host isn't busy with resource-intensive production tasks.

Conclusion

Gaming on a virtual machine is possible and can have certain benefits, such as:

• The opportunity to choose and flexibly change the OS on a VM.
• Secure the production environment from possible threats by isolating a VM.
• Back up a gaming virtual machine to preserve important data such as saved game files.
• Restore the default VM for gaming with the games and settings from a backup in minutes.

Optimizing a virtual machine for gaming purposes can take time and effort but the performance boost is worth it. Consider hosting a VM on an SSD, using fixed virtual hard disks, defragmenting drives on the host and configure antivirus software properly.

Also, don't compress or encrypt drivers on a gaming VM and disable the unnecessary apps on the host while gaming. Don't forget to enable Dynamic Memory if you use Hyper-V and to redistribute the host hardware resources when planning to play high-end games.

The post A Guide to Boost Your Virtual Machine Gaming Performance appeared first on Datafloq.

In this article, we explain the NAS backup definition, reasons to have a data protection strategy, and five main strategies to back up NAS devices. You'll be able to evaluate the pros and cons of every strategy yourself and pick the most suitable one for your infrastructure.

What is NAS Backup?

The word “backup” in IT means a copy of data, which is stored independently and can be used for recovery purposes even when the original infrastructure is unavailable. Thus, NAS backup is a spare copy of NAS data, which has another storage destination and can help you recover the original data in the event of an incident.

Why You Need a NAS Backup Strategy

The key use case for NAS devices in organizations is data storage provision. Usually, a corporate NAS device runs disks where sensitive data is recorded. That data requires special measures taken to protect the storage and the data itself from loss or unauthorized third party access.

Common threats causing data loss or breakage include:

• Human error: a user's mistake or carelessness can lead to accidental file deletion, drive overwrite, improper device usage, password compromising, active protection disabling etc. Improper hardware or software maintenance also falls into this threat category.
• Mechanical failure: you can configure RAID for NAS disks to overcome a failure of one disk. Still, even after one disk failure, NAS can be rendered inoperable because of overload resulting in storage bottleneck.
• Malware threats: ransomware or any other malware can reach your NAS storage and either cause data loss or grant unauthorized third-party access to the data. A bad actor can then alter, delete or steal an organization's sensitive data.
• Overheating: drives or other parts in your NAS device may fail after a cooling system malfunction that causes hardware overheat.
• Power outage: power supply in your office or data center is another factor that you can't control. Once the power is off, your NAS can lose data that had been being recorded at that moment. Then, on supply restoration, RAID settings may apply wrongly, blocking access or corrupting the remaining data as a result.
• Natural disasters: a fire, a flood, an earthquake or any other natural disaster is always a risk for your office or datacenter, as well as for the hardware running your organization's production.

Regarding the complexity and variety of the data that an organization may need to store and use in production, the implementation of a reliable backup and recovery approach requires a carefully designed plan.

5 NAS Backup Strategies Overview

Again, carefully organized regular backup is the only way to keep control over your NAS data after data loss incidents. Therefore, a thorough strategy can ensure the efficiency of NAS backups and recovery workflows. Check the five main NAS backup strategies and consider their pros and cons to pick the strategy most suitable for your organization.

Direct Backup to a USB Disk

Particular NAS devices have USB or eSATA ports enabling you to connect external disks to those devices and transfer data. Therefore, the simplest way to backup NAS data is to connect an external HDD or SSD to your NAS appliance and copy the necessary data manually.

Pros: Simple implementation, relatively low costs. Usually, NAS appliance vendors pack their solutions with default web interfaces for file management. Additionally, buying an external hard drive does not require huge investments.

Cons: The main downside of data backup to USB drives is manual implementation. You need to manually attach the disk with a cable, start copying the required data, and then ensure that the backup was successful. Any failure or interruption during the workflow makes data in the backup copy inconsistent and potentially unrecoverable. You also cannot copy the data that is used in writing operations at the moment when you start the workflow. Lastly, the capacity of a single external hard drive can be insufficient to fit all the data you might need to back up from NAS.

Backup to Another NAS

Copying the data from the main NAS device to a NAS backup appliance is another strategy you can consider. To implement that, you can, for instance, share a folder between a remote and a local NAS appliance.

Pros: Mounting a remote shared folder on a NAS appliance is a simple native way to enable direct data copying between two devices. Particular NAS models have the data operation scheduling function built in, meaning that you can configure backup automation with native software. Additionally, when you copy the data directly between NAS appliances, the backup server overhead is not the case.

Cons: The most significant downside here is the backup inconsistency in case when apps run files during the data copying workflow.

NDMP Backup

Created and designed purposely to manage backup workflows of NAS devices, NDMP (Network Data Management Protocol) simplifies the process of sending data via the network. With NDMP, you can directly send data copies to backup servers or tape devices. No additional processes from the backup clients are required.

The protocol enables direct communication between a NAS device and a backup server. NAS backup solutions from mainstream vendors (such as IBM and Commvault) usually have NDMP support built-in with different integration and functionality levels.

Pros: Backing up file data via NDMP is convenient. Additionally, NDMP is fully supported by Oracle Secure Backup.

Cons: The lack of full NDMP backup integration in the majority of other database apps, such as Microsoft Exchange or SQL. Ensuring data consistency in those apps requires application awareness support. Although you might think about customizing app awareness with specially created scripts, such a solution makes you shut down the app's process to enable the backup workflow. Thus, your production environment loses stability and continuity. Additionally, script maintenance can take a lot of effort from your IT department.

NAS Storage Backup to Cloud

If your organization has accounts in such cloud services as Amazon, Microsoft OneDrive/Azure or Backblaze, you can consider sending backups from NAS to the cloud. Still, keep in mind that your policy and the nature of the data should suit the use of public cloud storage.

Pros: Sending backup data to the cloud helps keep control over sensitive data in case your office or data center suffers from disasters. You can enable cloud backup without investing in a backup server as well. Additionally, NAS solutions from particular vendors can enable synchronizing data between the cloud and your NAS.

Cons: Cloud backup workflows can pose serious network bandwidth requirements if you need to regularly send large amounts of data over the internet without losing connection quality for production. Also, you need to have that connection stable while performing the backup workflow, and when recovering the data from cloud storage. Lastly, there is always a risk of losing your backups due to an emergency at the cloud storage vendor's side.

Block-Level Replication of NAS Devices

NAS device replication is another way to protect an organization's data. Vendors can offer specific software to replicate disk arrays and implement array-based replication as a NAS backup solution. With such a replication approach implemented, the system replicates the data from the primary NAS (source), which is in production, to a disaster recovery (DR) site.

Pros: Direct connection between source and DR NAS appliances enables redistributing compute load from a server to storage devices. Additionally, replication can ensure NAS backup data relevance and minimal storage downtime in case of emergency.

Cons: Software performing array-based replication on the block level is not app-aware and can copy only blocks that changed since the previous replication job (for asynchronous replication). Therefore, you risk damaging the data in case replication and introduction of changes to that data are simultaneous. Additionally, you'll need to place similar or nearly similar NAS devices on both sides of the process, increasing the overall cost of the entire backup infrastructure.

Third-Party NAS Backup Software: Versatile Solution for Efficient Custom Strategies

As you might already understand, coming up with an efficient NAS backup strategy is challenging and depends on the needs and capabilities of a particular organization. Customization is key to backup NAS systems reliably in such cases.

With the modern NAS backup software, such as NAKIVO Backup & Replication, organizations can create and manage automated data protection workflows according to the requirements and limitations of their infrastructures. Such software solutions can enable app-aware backup, fast recovery and near-instant replication running on schedule or on demand.

You can store backup copies of your NAS data on site, send them off site, to the cloud or tape to keep up with the 3-2-1 rule and avoid a single point of failure. Then, you can recover entire volumes or separate files to the original or custom location. The additional advantage of versatile backup software solutions is the variety of security and performance optimization features that increase the efficiency of your NAS backups even further.

Conclusion

Efficient NAS backup is impossible without a thoroughly configured and maintained strategy. You can back up NAS data manually to external drives, use another NAS, Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP), cloud, or replication as core elements of your backup strategy. However, each of these five strategies has particular downsides that may be critical, such as the lack of app awareness and high hardware costs. A deeply customized NAS backup strategy with the use of a third-party software solution can help you combine different approaches to utilize their advantages and eliminate disadvantages at the same time.

Check the original article here.

The post 5 NAS Backup Strategies: Pros and Cons Explained appeared first on Datafloq.

While certain methodologies or best practices extend past the boundaries of VMware vSphere and apply to Hyper-V as well, there are differences in the administration and management of Hyper-V that VMware administrators will want to note and understand. These differences also can affect backup processes in the administration.

Let's take a look at some of the key differences between Hyper-V and VMware and how these can affect your backup methodologies.

VMware vCenter Server vs. System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

VMware administrators are familiar with the well-known VMware vCenter Server – a centralized management and administration tool for creating, configuring, and interacting with all aspects of the vSphere environment. From vCenter, administrators can configure and control ESXi hosts, datacenters, clusters, traditional storage, software-defined storage, traditional networking, software-defined networking, and all other aspects of the vSphere architecture. In fact, vCenter Server is a necessary component to unlock most of the enterprise-level features and functionality of VMware vSphere.

As a VMware administrator, you will typically connect your data protection solution to VMware vCenter Server as the central management pane to back up virtual machines residing on managed ESXi hosts. This provides a central login for managing and controlling the resources backed up by vSphere data protection solutions. Moreover, you can use the HTML 5-based vSphere Web Client to manage vSphere functions from any browser.

In Microsoft Hyper-V, the equivalent solution for managing hosts and clusters is the System Center Virtual Machine Manager, or SCVMM.

However, with Hyper-V, you can perform many of the “enterprise” level tasks, such as managing a Hyper-V cluster, setting up high availability, and performing live migration without using SCVMM. You can use the Failover Cluster Management console to manage your cluster resources, including setting up and configuring Clustered Shared Volumes (or CSVs). Also, without SCVMM licensing, you can use the Manager console to manage each host, etc. More info about Hyper-V Managment tools.

Understanding the management interface and the differences between VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V is key to understanding the point of administration that is used to interface with data protection solutions, like . Typically, in either the VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V environment, you want to back up resources at the “host” level, which means you are backing up virtual machines centrally rather than from within the guest operating system. Knowing the respective management interfaces ensures effective and efficient VMware vSphere and Hyper-V backup.

vSphere Cluster vs. Hyper-V Cluster

With vCenter Server in place, creating a VMware vSphere ESXi cluster is a very quick and simple process: you simply add the hosts into the cluster. VMware “clustering” is purely for virtualization purposes.

Clustering is built on top of the Windows Failover Cluster technology. Windows Failover Clustering is applied in a number of different use cases, including file servers and SQL clusters, as well as Hyper-V. Due to the more general nature of the underlying clustering technology for Hyper-V, it brings more complexity to configuring a Hyper-V virtualization cluster. However, the task can be accomplished relatively quickly if you use either PowerShell or the cluster creation wizard – Failover Cluster Manager.

There are many data protection solutions available today that are able to easily interact with vSphere vCenter and the clusters managed therein. However, there are fewer data protection solutions that are able to integrate just as seamlessly with a cluster configuration.

Understanding VMware VMFS and Hyper-V cluster shared volumes

VMware vSphere utilizes the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) – VMware's clustered file system that was purpose-built from the ground up as a virtualization file system. With each release of vSphere, VMFS has been tweaked, and its functionality and capabilities have been extended. With vSphere 6.5, VMware introduced VMFS 6.0, featuring support for 4K Native Devices in 512e mode and automatic “unmapping” functionality to reclaim unused blocks.

Administrators need to understand the capabilities of each type of virtualization file system. Not all data protection solutions support Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster Shared Volumes, so it is important to understand the requirements for today's Hyper-V environments and the compatibility requirements of CSVs.

VMware uses Snapshots and Hyper-V uses checkpoints

Both have mechanisms that enable them to quickly save the state and data of a virtual machine at a given point in time. The term “snapshot” is by far the popularized word for this functionality and was coined by VMware. A snapshot operation in VMware creates the following files for the saved state and data:

• .vmdk – The flat.vmdk file contains the raw data in the base disk.
• -delta.vmdk – The delta disk is represented in the format of .00000x.vmdk. This is the differencing disk; it contains the difference between the current data of the virtual machine disk and the data at the time of the previous snapshot.
• .vmsd – This database file contains all the pertinent snapshot information.
• .vmsn – This contains the memory information of the virtual machine and its current state at the point in time of the snapshot.

It uses “checkpoints” as their terminology to define the means to save a “point in time” state of a virtual machine. Let's look at the architecture of the checkpoint.

A Snapshots folder is created that may contain the following files:

• VMCX – This is the new binary format for the configuration file introduced in Windows Server 2016. It replaces the XML file found in 2012 R2 and earlier.
• VMRS – This is the state file, which contains information about the state of the virtual machine.
• AVHDX – This is the differencing disk that is created. It records the delta changes made after the snapshot creation.

As a VMware administrator, you should be advised that Microsoft has introduced “production” checkpoints with Windows Server 2016. These interact with VSS (Volume Shadow Copy) to perform checkpoints that the guest operating system is aware of. These types of checkpoints function much like backup operations performed by data protection solutions.

Importantly, Microsoft allows these “production” checkpoints to be run in production environments. This is significant because before Windows Server 2016, this technology was not supported, and it is still not supported with VMware snapshots.

VMware changed block tracking vs. Hyper-V resilient change tracking

With the release of ESX 4.0 back in 2009, VMware introduced a feature called Changed Block Tracking (CBT) that dramatically increases backup efficiency. Using this technology, data protection solutions are able to copy only the blocks that have changed since the last backup iteration. This method works for every backup iteration following an initial full backup of the virtual machine. You can now efficiently back up only the changes, at the block level, instead of taking full backups of a virtual machine every time, which is what generally happens with traditional legacy backup solutions.

If you are a VMware administrator shifting to administrating Microsoft Hyper-V, you should know that Microsoft's equivalent offering, called Resilient Change Tracking (RCT), was only introduced with Windows Server 2016.

When you back up with Hyper-V's Resilient Change Tracking, the following files will be created:

• The Resilient Change Tracking (.RCT) file – a detailed representation of changed blocks on the disk (less detailed than mapping in memory). It is written in write-back or cached mode, which means that it is used during normal virtual machine operations such as migrations, startups, shutdowns, etc.
• The Modified Region Table (.MRT) file – is a less detailed file than the (.RCT) file; however, it records all the changes on the disk. In the event of an unexpected power-off, crash, or another failure, the MRT file will be used to reconstruct the changed blocks.

Make sure your chosen data protection solution can take advantage of the latest advancements in Hyper-V's implementation of change tracking technology known as Resilient Change Tracking. This will ensure the quickest and most efficient Hyper-V backup iterations.

VMware uses VMware tools vs Hyper-V uses integration services

Both VMware and Hyper-V make use of components installed in the guest operating system to ensure more powerful integration between the hypervisor and the guest operating system. In VMware vSphere, this is handled with VMware Tools.

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that can be installed for better virtual machine performance, including driver-supported 3D graphics and mouse and keyboard enhancements, as well as time synchronization, scripting, and other automation features. Importantly, it also enables you to perform “application-aware” backups, which ensures that database applications are backed up in a transactionally consistent state.

Concluding thoughts

In today's world of hybrid infrastructures and multi-hypervisor environments, at some point, you will most likely be asked to act as an administrator of both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments for production workloads.

Understanding the differences in management, administration, and underlying architecture is important for the successful administration of both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. All of these differences affect data protection solutions and their interaction with the hypervisors.

Check original article here.

The post The ultimate guide to Hyper-V backups for VMware administrators appeared first on Datafloq.

However, focusing on cloud computing as your organization's main data storage has downsides. The main concern here is data and cloud VM security; the nature of cloud infrastructure makes providing the appropriate level of data protection challenging. In this post, we explain:

What challenges to expect on the way to reliable cloud data protection
How to secure your cloud virtual machine

Virtual Cloud Computing: Main Security Challenges

Using a virtual machine in cloud computing requires taking proper measures to make security efficient. Before we proceed with explaining the particular recommendations, let's review the main issues that organizations running cloud infrastructures can face:

Data loss
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
Data breaches
Access control difficulties
Alerts and notifications

How to Secure a Cloud Virtual Machine: Five Virtualized Security Tips

As with any IT protection system, the most critical recommendations regarding the security of cloud VMs are basic. Ignoring these simple guidelines increases the risk of security failure, compromised credentials and further improper use of data or systems by bad actors. Check these five tips on boosting the efficiency of cloud virtual machine security in your infrastructure.

1. Secure and Separate Connections
The use of virtual networks enables you to maintain flexibility in connections to different nodes of your infrastructure. That means a virtual network is modified frequently and it's possible to establish an unwanted connection between machines, services or data repositories. This can result in unplanned data circulation through a VM and a leaking threat, which can remain hidden until the very last moment.

To avoid worst-case scenarios, double-check your virtual networks and keep them secure and separate. Conduct regular revisions of network routes and check the changes before and after establishing new connections to a VM.

2. Use Separate Management APIs
Isolating infrastructure management from the service itself is another important step in strengthening virtual machine security. Management APIs are there to set up and regulate functionalities, service behavior and features, meaning that every API of that kind creates numerous risks.

All management APIs must be protected, but you should pay special attention to those controlling parts of your infrastructure. Ensure only authorized and qualified staff have access to such APIs.

3. Verify VM Components
Before the implementation of new features, components and functions to a VM, you should check if those elements correlate with the security requirements, including internal policies and compliance requirements. An outsider threat is a typical case that security measures aim to counter, but insider attacks are frequently overlooked while being devastating when they happen.

Once you install an app, configure a feature or function on a VM, any element can have a security vulnerability remaining unnoticed on release. When you add an unverified component, the entire VM becomes a weak spot in the infrastructure security, providing attack opportunities to other elements of the environment. Develop a template for advanced verification and lifecycle management for VMs that has clearly stated audit points. Then use that template every time you introduce changes to a machine.

4. Isolate Hosted Elements
Another critical point of cloud virtual machine security is the isolation of every new element you host. For instance, if you have services or features in the cloud that are accessible to users within the network in any way, any feature or service can be a cyberattack target.

Isolating your hosting and feature connections inside a private subnetwork is a solution here. That's the way to improve your cloud VMs' and their applications' resilience.

5. Regularly Back Up Cloud VMs
No matter how advanced and thorough your security measures are, a hacker intending to break through them is one step ahead and can come up with malware sophisticated enough to bypass that protection. The only reliable way to protect your VMs with their settings and data is to regularly and correctly back up those workloads.

A modern VM backup solution can help you automatically back up cloud VMs to different destinations. Those VMs can then be recovered to their original or custom locations with minimal downtime. Consider integrating one of these all-in-one data protection solutions into your organization's infrastructure to ensure data availability and business continuity.

Additional Recommendations to Prevent Virtualization Security Issues

The five points above are crucial to maintaining the safety of cloud VMs. However, applying other common security practices can lead to further enhancement of data protection in your organization. Below you can check three more security tips that work for any infrastructure, including virtualized environments.

Reliable Passwords
No matter how serious and advanced your data protection measures are, the passwords providing access to your VMs, cloud service accounts, control panels and dashboards must be strong. Otherwise, it's like you'd invest a lot in thick walls and armored windows without locking the front door.

A strong password includes at least eight symbols: Uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. Another important feature of a reliable password is that it should be meaningless; a good password does not have any logic or meaning behind it which an attacker could guess. Here are two examples:

Reliable password: 2&4fkOzQ*[email protected]
Unreliable password: Johnny07231976hey!

Note: the more symbols are in your password, the more challenging it becomes for an attacker to break through that password.

Encryption of Everything
Encrypting data in flight and at rest can prevent unauthorized third parties from stealing or modifying critical data. Therefore, try to encrypt every piece of data that your organization sends outside the internal network and infrastructure. Encryption of internal traffic can boost data protection even further, but in that case, you need to provide additional resources to keep performance at the same level.

Two-Factor Authentication and Role-Based Access
Two-factor authentication is a must for every user that has access to cloud infrastructure and especially to critical elements. Such a measure adds one more layer of security. To log in, you'll have to provide a password and an additional authentication key from Google Authenticator, for example. Thus, you can prevent an attacker that has compromised your password from retrieving access to your cloud VMs and react in time to close that breach.

Role-based access control (RBAC) is another strongly recommended approach to strengthen any infrastructure's security. RBAC enables you to grant particular rights per user based on that user's role in the organization. Hence, an attacker that gets access to an employee's account can reach, steal and modify only a limited amount of data.

Use Kubernetes to Streamline Security Management for Cloud Workloads

Originally an open source orchestration platform for containers, Kubernetes can become a convenient security management solution for cloud workloads, including VMs. When added to your cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes enables you to use the controls' flexibility and automation features for the purpose of protection boost.

For example, you can deploy a cloud VM, then set Kubernetes to automatically manage the resources available to that VM based on the current load and security policies applied. Kubernetes can provide the required level of data protection by controlling access to workloads, setting appropriate confidentiality for the secrets you store and checking if the newly added workloads have proper configurations.

Kubernetes can also give you extra or alternative security capabilities compared to your cloud provider's native features. You can combine the policies applied to a cloud workload, as Kubernetes sets an additional abstraction layer between the provider's security services and your policy goals.

Conclusion

Securing a virtual machine in cloud computing requires a thorough understanding of threats and challenges that are relevant to cloud infrastructure. Setting up a cloud VM that is resilient is possible when you:

Establish secure and separated connections between VMs to avoid unwanted data flows
Use separate management APIs to avoid granting too much access to one use
rRegularly check VM components for new vulnerabilities
Isolate elements in a private network
Set a regular backup workflow for cloud VMs to keep control of your data

Additionally, use common security approaches such as generating reliable passwords, encrypting the data, two-factor authentication and role-based access control. They can enhance protection of any IT infrastructure, including cloud virtual machines and entire environments. To simplify security management, you can also consider integrating Kubernetes into your infrastructure.

The post 5 Ways to Secure a Virtual Machine in Cloud Computing appeared first on Datafloq.

Those who utilize the virtualization technology have to come up with specifically targeted hypervisor data protection measures, such as ESXi and Hyper-V backup. These solutions are practical and effective for hypervisor users as they can guarantee comprehensive data protection against ransomware, physical hardware collapses, and software failures. Read on to find out how the degree of your business continuity can be determined and what measures may help to maximize it.

Microsoft Solutions for Business Continuity

Overall, the complex of Microsoft virtualization products embeds a set of features guaranteeing business continuity and rigorous disaster recovery. Those who use the Hyper-V product may take advantage of the centralized backup with Data Protection Manager or opt for a simpler protection package available with Windows Server Backup. Additional measures include the integration of WSB/DPM with Microsoft Azure Backup to create a reserve cloud storage for sensitive data.

The orchestrated Hyper-V VM replication and recovery with Azure Site Recovery is the most robust data backup solution to date. Besides, businesses can use Azure for VMware and physical hardware data backup purposes, making sure that the whole database is kept intact in a remote location and available for quick, hassle-free recovery at any point in time. Users with advanced tech skills may also try the Hyper-V Failover feature for enhancement of VM resilience.

Designing a Business Continuity Plan

To have a complete idea of your data protection needs and steps, you should initiate a data protection review to examine the following critical areas:

• What are your company's specific recovery requirements?
• What are service-level agreements needed?
• What are enterprise data protection strategies currently put in place?
• What mitigation strategies are you employing?
• What best practices are you following in the implementation of a data protection strategy?

When reviewing your enterprise data protection strategy, please keep in mind that it should cover the data, services, servers, sites, and offsite backups you have. In case any of the elements are not included, a massive data loss or hardware failure may still cause some irreparable damage to your organization.

Ensuring Continuity with Windows Server Backup

Businesses looking for secure and comprehensive server backup solutions for the sake of business continuity protection may consider Windows Server Backup as a versatile and affordable option. This Microsoft product covers full server backup, performing system state and bare-metal recovery functions robustly.

Users can choose among several storage locations for the server backup activities, as well as program the system to back up selected files or file types. To customize Windows Server Backup services for your individual needs, you should perform a space audit to see whether your space requirements fit a full or incremental backup. It would help if you also stipulated the frequency and retention parameters for backup, reviewing the time required for the complete backup process to take place.

Azure Backup for Continuity Guarantees

Microsoft has expanded its business continuity solutions to cover cloud backup services – Microsoft Azure Backup. Using this product is very advantageous for businesses as it's an affordable backup option with numerous perks. First, Azure guarantees data protection reliability, and its use is simple, even for laypersons. Second, it is an easily integrated product requiring minimum time for setup. Third, the optimum use of bandwidth and storage allows greater flexibility in configuration, storage, and recovery operations. All this is provided at a highly user-friendly price, with the first 5GB of memory space provided free of charge.

As you can see, business continuity is strategically vital in the current conditions, with most enterprises performing their operations online and storing data digitally. Microsoft has many solutions for enhancing data backup and guaranteeing continuity. Choose among the available products to secure your business and manage critical data strategically.

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