Data tapes can significantly reduce security vulnerabilities, and many businesses are turning to tape for protection against ransomware attacks. It’s a strong strategy, as air-gapped backups can allow for quick disaster recovery in a disaster. However, all backup strategies need to be assessed carefully.

Modern ransomware targets backups by design. That includes all types of backups — and while data tapes are less vulnerable than a networked backup system, managers still need to take appropriate precautions to secure their cold storage.

How Ransomware Variants Can Compromise Backups

Prior to 2017, ransomware attacks were frequently scattershot operations. Bad actors created phishing campaigns to compromise outdated systems, but few variants were designed for specific targets. That changed quickly in May 2017, when the WannaCry ransomware variant began spreading. While WannaCry wasn’t the first variant to target backups, it was the most widespread — by targeting volume shadow copies, the malware was able to compromise full systems that used basic backup procedures.

Modern enterprises have sophisticated backup plans (at least, far more sophisticated than keeping backups as basic volume shadow copies), but newer variants have made adjustments to prevent backups from being viable. Some points to keep in mind:

● Most targeted ransomware attacks do not activate immediately after infection. Ransomware may be dormant on a system for months. That ensures that any backups made after infection will be effectively useless.

● Modern ransomware variants are designed to target backup systems. Attackers utilize APIs to discover and eliminate backups, either through deletion or encryption.

● Some ransomware variants will delete backups immediately, but others won’t take action until activation.

● Modern variants will also target data in the cloud, which is why isolated backups are essential for preventing system-wide infection.

Data tapes are designed to protect against accidental deletion, hardware failure, and other common causes of data loss, but they’re limited by the backup software used to write the data. Typically, these programs aren’t designed to prevent ransomware from being written to the backup.

This does not mean that tapes are a poor ransomware mitigation strategy — data tape archives are the most effective way to prevent a successful attack, as an air-gapped backup will allow an enterprise to successfully recover without paying a ransom. However, IT managers need to evaluate their disaster recovery protocols carefully and limit potential sources of exposure.

Protecting Data from Ransomware

Many security vulnerabilities can be addressed easily. To develop a robust and secure system, you’ll need to limit the potential for an attack and have a solid plan in place for when an attack occurs.

That starts with a few common-sense steps:

● Limit access to backup systems. Most ransomware is distributed via phishing campaigns, but that’s not always the case. Backup systems should be regularly updated to resolve vulnerabilities. Limit employee access to these systems and prevent employees from using unauthorized peripherals (such as USB drives or optical media) when performing their duties.

● Educate employees. The best way to recover from an attack is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Create clear practices, instructing employees not to open unexpected email attachments, even when working remotely.

● Keep multiple “golden copy” backups. Make sure your backups occur on a reasonable schedule. Maintain several recoverable copies of mission-critical data — “golden copies” — and check these backups for consistency.

● Upgrade your data tapes to modern formats. While older tape formats aren’t necessarily more vulnerable than modern formats, older backup software can have vulnerabilities, and newer formats like LTO-8 can greatly decrease downtime in a disaster.

Finally, recognize that no security policy can completely eliminate the possibility of a ransomware infection. At the enterprise level, bad actors have too many front-door options for infiltrating a system, so an appropriate disaster recovery strategy is absolutely essential.

When planning for an attack, work with an experienced tape migration partner. Total Data Migration’s experts can help your business get back up and running while ensuring that ransomware doesn’t infect the restored system. Our team can also help you migrate your library to newer formats while converting files, ensuring a faster response. Contact us or call (800) 460-7599 for a free consultation.

For large enterprises, media sanitization can be a difficult prospect — particularly when the target is terabytes or petabytes of data on magnetic tape media. The goal of media sanitization is to irrevocably render all data irrecoverable, and tape cartridges have unique characteristics that become more formidable at scale.

No two data tape destruction projects are identical, but the right approach can improve security and cost efficiency. Before beginning media sanitization, keep these considerations in mind.

Define the scope of your data sanitization project.

Enterprise-level data destruction projects can quickly grow beyond their allotted budgets. CIOs and other decision-makers need to identify potential bottlenecks and set goals early in the project, and while this isn’t always easy, it’s an essential first step.

Start by collecting information about the size, format, and number of target tapes. Resist the urge to handle data destruction in-house; as we’ll discuss momentarily, physically destroying tape cartridges can present challenges, and to reliably verify sanitization, personnel will need extensive experience with the type of media they’re handling.

Finally, keep a paper trail. Great recordkeeping is an essential component of any data security project — and needless to say, recordkeeping is frequently neglected. Your enterprise should be able to demonstrate the methods used to sanitize media and should be able to identify all media involved in the project. These records can be useful for planning future projects and establishing better IT security practices overall.

Choose a secure data sanitization method.

Many CIOs assume that sanitization requires physical destruction. That’s not necessarily the case; since physical media destruction can increase the budget for the project, it shouldn’t be the default method.

Nevertheless, one 2009 research report from Enterprise Strategy Group found that 53% of large enterprises used brute-force methods (in other words, physical destruction techniques) to sanitize storage data. In many cases, these physical methods aren’t designed for magnetic tape media, and as a result, they’re largely ineffective from a security standpoint.

Common sanitization techniques for data tapes include:

● Degaussing – For many tape formats, degaussing is effective, but the process must be handled (and verified) by experienced professionals. Improper degaussing techniques can leave usable data in place. Our blog “Why Degaussing Tape Backup Cartridges Isn’t Secure Sanitization” provides additional details.

● Cryptographic Erase – This logical process erases cryptographic keys, rendering the device inaccessible. While this is an acceptable means of partial sanitization, it can make verification (and documentation) much more difficult.

● Shredding – Tape is thin and flexible, and hardware shredders cannot reliably shred tape to eliminate usable data. While shredding is a common method of sanitization, it creates security hazards.

● Incineration – Incineration is secure, but has a serious environmental impact. As a result, some incineration service providers enforce daily limits for data cartridges, which can increase the scope of the project.

Degaussing is a superior option for sanitization, but the process must be performed in a controlled setting by experienced tape specialists. Commercial degaussers can leave small fragments of data intact — while the data will be difficult to restore, partial data recovery is not impossible, and malicious actors can cause a lot of damage with a limited amount of information.

Don’t send old tapes to a landfill (or give them away).

Many sanitization techniques eliminate data without ruining the media. If your enterprise is upgrading to a newer format — or if tapes are nearing the end of their expected storage lifespan — you might decide to recoup some of the costs of the data destruction project by selling the old cartridges.

However, even if you’ve verified erasure, selling or donating your used data tapes can deliver useful information to bad actors and open up data exfiltration vectors. LTO-8 tapes, for instance, have a 16-megabyte Cartridge Memory chip that stores the cartridge’s age, load frequency, error accumulation, and other basic information. Cyber criminals could potentially use that info when planning an attack.

Sending tapes to a landfill presents the same security concerns (along with brand-new environmental considerations). Of course, security issues can be mitigated with proper erasure verification procedures, and Total Data Migration provides environmentally friendly disposal alternatives.

By working with experts, your enterprise can allocate resources more effectively while securely eradicating sensitive data. As industry leaders in tape services, we’re ready to help. Contact us online to schedule a consultation or call (800) 460-7599.

Poor data security creates serious liabilities for any organization. Given the growing threats of ransomware, identity theft, and security-related litigation, many businesses have taken appropriate steps to safeguard their networks.

Unfortunately, many of these companies still rely on outdated data erasure techniques. Software-based data deletion needs to be handled carefully, which can mean hefty costs for larger tape libraries. Physical destruction is similarly expensive, and throwing data cartridges into a landfill can result in costly compliance violations (and that’s a best-case scenario).

To protect your business, consider whether you’re making any of these common mistakes when handling cartridges that have reached the end of their life cycle.

You don’t keep incomplete records of media sanitization procedures.

Poor recordkeeping can lead to costly compliance violations, particularly if the data in question contains personally identifiable information. Regardless of the size of your organization, you should diligently maintain records — including verification processes and third-party provider credentials — to demonstrate conformance with relevant standards.

Of course, recordkeeping requirements for data erasure vary substantially. At Total Data Migration, we maintain a complete chain of custody for all media containing sensitive data, and we have experience with safe (and compliant) handling procedures for medical, genetic, legal, and payroll data.

You assume that encryption key destruction (or shredding) is sufficient.

Cryptographic erase (or CE) greatly reduces the time allocated to sanitization. By erasing the cryptographic keys, this process renders the data on the device completely inaccessible, and it is generally considered a preferable method of partial sanitization.

The downside: With some types of data cartridges, verifying the erasure is difficult — and verification plays an important role in compliance. This isn’t to say that cryptographic erase techniques will expose sensitive data, but as we’ve discussed, documenting the erasure is as important as performing the actual process.

NIST Special Publication 800-88 lays out the most widely accepted standards for sanitization. The 2014 revision of the guidelines note:

“If verification cannot be performed, organizations should use alternative sanitization methods that can be verified, or use CE in combination with a sanitization technique that can be verified.”

The good news: Cryptographic erase can be properly verified, but the process needs to be handled carefully and correctly. When full sanitization is preferable, it’s important to understand the technique’s limitations and to take precautions.

You assume that all physical data tape destruction techniques provide the same results.

Tape cartridges are more durable than other forms of digital storage media, but physical destruction is certainly a possible — and reliable — method of disposal. With that said, some destruction techniques work more effectively (and cost less) than others.

Proper degaussing is typically the best option. Degaussing removes magnetism, preventing data recovery; however, degaussing still requires verification, and inexperienced personnel may make mistakes that leave a portion of the tape intact.

Other forms of physical destruction include incineration, shredding, and techniques that combine several processes (electronic shredders, for instance, might shred the tape while simultaneously degaussing the media). These methods may be unreliable or impractical at scale. Incineration, for instance, destroys the tape — but incinerating a large library of data cartridges isn’t efficient or environmentally responsible.

When retiring legacy systems, you handle tape erasure in-house.

All data erasure procedures need to be performed by properly trained operators. Most organizations develop extensive training processes and maintain appropriate oversight during partial data sanitization procedures — but when upgrading equipment, the risk of a mistake becomes much more significant.

Additionally, the standardized techniques used for everyday media sanitization may not scale effectively. By handling the job in-house, companies often spend unnecessary time and money, particularly when attempting to verify the erasure. Outsourcing data erasure to a qualified third party is typically the best (and most secure) course of action. The third-party should be able to provide a certificate of sanitization, along with chain-of-custody records and other appropriate documentation.

Total Data Migration can provide the expert services and guidance that your operation needs — regardless of whether you’re forming a sanitization plan, recovering from an image, migrating from a legacy system, or disposing of unusable cartridges. Contact us today to discuss options.

Ransomware attacks continue to draw headlines — and cost world economies billions of dollars per year. In May 2021, the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack became the most high-profile case of ransomware penetration in recent memory. For the time being, the attackers won; the company reportedly paid nearly $5 million to restore the infected network.

Of course, the best solution to the threat of ransomware is simply to create a dependable backup strategy, but forming that strategy can be difficult. Incremental and differential backups can carry ransomware, preventing restoration. In fact, any backup system that connects to the internet could carry the ransomware infection, defeating the purpose of the backup.

Physical backups offer a solution to this problem, and many companies are turning to state-of-the-art tape technology to protect against the growing ransomware threat. Some of the benefits of this approach:

• Data tapes aren’t as susceptible to network penetration. This is an obvious benefit shared with most other physical media; tape cartridges can be disconnected from the internet, duplicated for integrity, and stored anywhere. During a ransomware attack, the “air gap” is an effective form of protection, and tapes offer one of the most reliable methods of air gapping.

With this in mind, data tapes aren’t 100% resilient to ransomware attacks, so it’s important to use the right approach. We’ll provide more details in the next section of this article.

• Data tapes are cost effective. With compression, LTO-8 technology can store 30 terabytes (TB) of data (12TB native) for under $75 per tape. Even accounting for the cost of hardware, storage, and third-party data migration, magnetic tape is much less expensive than cloud storage — and certainly far less expensive than onsite HDD- or SSD-based tech.
• Data tapes can supplement other types of backup. Tape backups can act as a secondary form of defense, providing inexpensive images that can be restored when other methods have failed. This ensures protection against time-delayed ransomware attacks (discussed below). While tapes can certainly provide incremental or differential backups, they’re especially useful for keeping several mirror images of the system.

Finally — and most importantly — data tapes allow for faster restoration of mission-critical systems. Spectra’s TS1155 cartridges offer compressed data transfer rates of 700 MB/S. LTO-8 cartridges offer a transfer rate of up to 750MB/sec (compressed), which can be paired with current-gen file storage technologies for quick recovery in a disaster. For example, Fujifilm’s LTFS file system can access data across multiple tapes on a file-by-file basis, allowing for much faster image restoration than what would be possible through most cloud-based backup methods.

During a ransomware attack, seconds count. System downtime can be enormously expensive, and magnetic tapes offer enormous benefits at a relatively low cost.

Protecting Mission-Critical Systems from Ransomware Attacks with Data Tapes

The physicality of data tapes makes them uniquely robust for enterprise-level systems. However, no storage technology is totally immune from malicious attacks. Many ransomware variants delay their attacks for months after infection. The goal is to prevent the business from restoring from a backup — and organizations that keep a limited number of onsite backups can suffer catastrophic losses from this type of attack.

A resilient data restoration strategy will utilize several types of backup (including incremental, differential, and full backups) to meet established recovery time objectives. Legacy backups should be maintained offsite to allow for a faster response. Tapes should be migrated to the latest technologies, and backups should be checked regularly for consistency and usability. Needless to say, this process isn’t always easy.

Total Data Migration can help. We maintain an extensive collection of drives and systems, and by drawing on decades of expertise, we’re able to offer data tape migration, restoration, and disposal services for organizations of every size. Most importantly, we prioritize data security and privacy to help your business respond to emergencies with total peace of mind.

Whether you’re recovering from a ransomware attack or creating a future-proof malware mitigation strategy, our team is ready to answer your questions. Contact us here to get started.

Several months ago, a prominent Nationwide Eye Care integrator acquired and merged a new leading eye care service provider into their network. Two weeks into the completion of this acquisition, the new company was attacked by ransomware causing a complete shutdown of their databases containing all patient information. This created a serious problem for the acquiring company as they were now unable to retrieve or provide any information to their new clients. This situation could have caused major issues for the patients who were in need of immediate care, plus as a health care providing entity, the legal ramification could have been extremely costly. Not to mention a major tarnishing of their impeccable record.

Fortunately for them their dilemma was short lived due to the quick action on their part in reaching out to Total Data Migration (TDM). With the expertise that TDM provided they were quickly able to get into the company’s backup platform. They were then able to restore the data and help them rebuild the client information and get them back on line. Total Data Migration was able to make this happen in just a few short days, with the integrator back up and running with the new restored databases.

This story has a happy ending, patients receiving the care they need, the prominent Nationwide eye care company having a successful acquisition with a very minor interruption in service, and no bad mark against their reputation!! But as we all know, this could have had a very different outcome if they hadn’t reached out to Total Data Migration to help them navigate this very stressful….and potentially costly situation.

If you have experienced a ransomware attack or need to restore and rebuild your business-critical information from backup tapes, contact TDM today to discuss your needs.

Data tape cartridges have played an essential role in enterprise storage since the first days of computing. While the average computer user will never interact with a Linear Tape-Open (LTO) or Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) cartridge, IT professionals understand the importance of reliable, long-term storage.

In our work, we frequently encounter misunderstandings about how data cartridges function — and inaccurate comparisons between modern data tapes and other storage technologies. In this article, we’ll address a few of the most common myths.