Data has become the most valuable asset of any organization. Companies, ranging from small businesses to enterprises, rely on data to analyze the market, understand customers, and create business strategies that maximize revenue.
However, that very data makes companies prone to cyber threats. In the Data Protection Trends Report 2024 by Veeam, 40 percent of all organizations cited cybersecurity events as the main reason for system outages in the last 24 months.
Among those events, ransomware dominates. Three out of four organizations fell victim to at least one ransomware attack in the last 12 months.
These numbers highlight the importance of data recovery strategies. In the case of ransomware attacks, you need a backup that maintains its integrity. This is where immutable backups come in. They make sure your data stays unaltered, even if attackers gain access to it.
In this article, you will learn about the ins and outs of immutable backups, their benefits and drawbacks, and how you can make them work for your business.
What is an immutable backup?
Immutable backups are unchangeable. They retain data in its original form. Even if outsiders gain access to your backups, they won’t be able to modify the data. Specifically, they won’t be able to erase the data, encrypt it, or introduce malware into your backup copies.
Immutable backups can be encrypted by the data owner, so their content cannot be made public, even if the backup should fall into unauthorized hands. They are also virtually permanent unless the owner sets a specific time for deletion beforehand; the retention period is set according to the organization’s data governance policies and the capabilities of the backup solution in use. By setting a deletion date, owners can also manage their storage capacity more efficiently, as storing multiple immutable backups can take up a lot of storage space.
These features ensure that businesses always have an intact copy of their original data. This is especially relevant with ransomware attacks. Cybercriminals no longer just try to encrypt your primary system. They specifically target your backup systems so you can’t recover your data. This makes you more likely to pay the ransom. If you always have a reliable copy of your data that you can fall back on, ransomware attacks lose much of their sting.
Other common use cases for immutable backups are dealing with insider threats and complying with regulatory requirements.
In short, immutable backups protect you from inside and outside tampering. Companies can easily recover the necessary files after a data breach. They are your rock in an ever-shifting digital landscape.
Features of immutable backups
Immutable backups have several distinct features:
Seamless data replication
Immutable backups allow for the creation of multiple data copies without affecting the original data. These copies are referred to as clones and can be distributed to any authorized users.
Just like the original data, clones can also be immutable. However, businesses usually clone immutable data to allow for modifications, while keeping the original backup intact.
Tracking changes
Immutable backups cannot be overwritten. That means you can’t add changes to the original data once a backup has been created.
However, you can use other backup methods to log changes in separate backup copies, which act as an add-on to the core data set. This helps to easily track changes made after the initial backup. Also, it will speed up the backup process, as you don’t have to create a new full backup every single time.
Authentication permissions
Immutable backups provide strong authorization features to limit access to select team members. You can set different roles and modify permissions.
You can also control how long each role can access the data. For example, an administrator may have permission to access immutable backups whenever required. However, an external data analyst might only have permission to read the data temporarily, while they are working on the project.
Custom retention periods
Immutable backups provide a safe way of storing data permanently. However, as businesses create multiple backups over time, these copies can take up considerable storage space. This can turn into an unnecessary business expenditure, especially if the data is stored locally.
To prevent this, businesses can set a storage duration for their immutable backups. After that time is up, the backup is automatically deleted.
Typically, businesses store immutable backups for a relatively short period — say a week or a month. In certain instances, though, data may be saved for years. This might be necessary to comply with regulatory requirements or to preserve important historical records. Having said this, immutable technology is not meant to be an archiving solution, as it is too expensive for that. It is meant to protect an organization against cyber attacks. For pure archiving purposes, there are cheaper methods to store data.
Types of immutable backups
There are different ways to employ immutable backups in your organization:
Write once, read many (WORM)
Administrators can set data as WORM (“write once, read many”) to flag it as immutable. Now the data can be accessed by all authorized users as many times as they want. However, they cannot modify it anymore.
WORM is typically used for backing up sensitive long-term data. For example, a legal firm might save its post-trial files on a WORM magnetic tape.
Continuous data protection (CDP)
CDP captures every change made to data in real-time or near real-time, ensuring minimal data loss. This way, you ensure your data is always available in its most recent state. CDP is a good solution if you want to be able to restore your data granularly.
Time-based snapshots
Here, a delta algorithm takes frequent snapshots of your data. These snapshots only contain the changes since the last backup. This approach is ideal for storage systems shared by many VMs. It helps with managing your storage capacity efficiently and keeping data transfer rates low.
Versioned backups
A versioned backup creates multiple versions of a data set to ensure you can go back to previous versions. This is in contrast to periodic backups, which are triggered on a timed basis. Versioned backups only occur when a file changes. This approach is ideal for creating an audit trail, for example when dealing with ever-changing, yet sensitive financial data.
Cloud-based immutable backups
Here, your backup data is saved to a remote data center, like Microsoft Azure or a private cloud solution. The advantage is that you can access your data from any geographical location. In addition, cloud solutions scale well. They also tend to use the latest security technology, as the cloud providers have a strong self-interest in keeping your data safe.
Immutable vs. mutable backups
The key difference between immutable and mutable backups is the way that data is stored. Immutable backups save fixed data that cannot be altered in retrospect. In comparison, mutable backups can be easily deleted, overwritten, or encrypted.
This makes mutable backups more prone to cybersecurity threats, as attackers can hack the database and modify it. Consequently, immutable backups have become more popular in recent years, in conjunction with inexpensive cloud storage.
However, mutable backups are still in use, especially in organizations that run their own on-prem data centers. In this context, they have certain benefits.
First among them is flexibility. If changes to the data become necessary, companies can alter the mutable backup files quickly, without creating entirely new copies. This also helps them save storage space and reduce server costs.
Hybrid approaches are a third way to go. In this scenario, you back up most of your data using traditional backups. But in certain intervals, for example, once a month, you create an immutable copy. Now, if your mutable backups are affected by a cyberattack, your organization won’t lose too much progress.
Bottom line — when choosing your backup approach, you should consider your organization’s infrastructure and processes. Depending on these parameters, you might go with an extra safe, immutable-only approach, a traditional, mutable backup, or a hybrid approach.
Benefits
Immutable backups offer a number of benefits:
Immunity to ransomware attacks
Immutable backups protect data from cybersecurity threats, especially ransomware attacks. With ransomware, attackers encrypt the existing data — including data backups — to make it inaccessible to the organization. Only when a ransom is paid does the data become accessible again.
This is not just theoretical. According to the 2023 Ransomware Trends Report by Veeam, 80 percent of all organizations that fell victim to a ransomware attack ended up paying the ransom. Yet, one-fourth of them were still not able to recover their data.
Immutable backups reduce this risk by preventing modification and encryption of data. This renders ransomware attacks ineffective.
Insider threats
Apart from external cybersecurity threats, your data may also be prone to insider threats. According to the 2023 Insider Threat Report, 74 percent of organizations experienced an increase in insider attacks.
Insider threats can come in several forms. Staff members and authorized users may want to steal files for personal gain — typically by selling the information to a competing organization. This is especially relevant for defense, government, and other organizations that deal with classified data. In addition, unhappy employees might also corrupt company data simply out of spite.
Insider threats may not always be due to malicious intent, though. For example, a data analyst may accidentally delete an important backup file while trying to copy it.
Whatever the scenario, immutable backups are an effective countermeasure. They will protect your data from unwanted modification or deletion.
Reliable data records
If your data is compromised in a security breach, an immutable backup can serve as a guide for investigations. It provides reliable records of historical data. This helps to clarify what data was compromised during an attack, which changes may have led to the breach, and what vulnerabilities were present in the data in the first place.
Compliance assurance
Organizations that are governed by regulatory requirements need to maintain data integrity at all costs. Immutable backups help to ensure this data integrity. They might also have a compliance point towards the upcoming NIS-2 directive, which requires “business continuity, such as backup management and disaster recovery, and crisis management.”
Is your business affected by regulatory requirements? With a vetted service provider like Proact, you can improve your compliance significantly by choosing one of our state-of-the-art backup and recovery plans.
Drawbacks
As with every technology, immutable backups also have some potential drawbacks:
Excess data storage
Typically, every new immutable backup will take up either the same or more space than the previous backup. As organizations make changes to their data, this can become expensive quickly, as the cost of data storage keeps adding up.
However, this can be mitigated by creating an initial full backup and then only backing up changes to your data.
Outdated data storage
Immutable backups allow you to save your data for as long as you require. But in a fast-changing world, data can become irrelevant quickly.
For example, if you want to understand customer demand in 2024, data related to customer demand in 2020 isn’t that useful anymore. However, if this outdated data is saved as immutable, you cannot delete these backups and are still responsible for them.
The solution is to assess your data realistically beforehand. Assign deletion deadlines that correspond with the shelf-life of the data.
Reduced flexibility
If companies expect rapid changes to their data, storing it as an immutable backup may not be the best choice. It cannot easily accommodate every small change.
However, this can be overcome by using a combination of mutable and immutable backups or creating a series of small immutable backups in the local storage.
Use cases
While most organizations will benefit from immutable backups for security reasons, they are also leveraged for these use cases:
Data migration
During a data migration, you might want to preserve your data as an immutable backup. If a migration goes wrong, you’ll have a reliable backup to recover your data in its original form. The backup can also serve as a reference to ensure all data was migrated as required.
Trustworthy service providers like Proact have backup plans that help recover your data in minutes, making data loss a problem of the past.
Intellectual property preservation
Preserving trademarks, patents, and technological innovations is crucial to protecting a company’s intellectual property. By maintaining immutable backups, you can safely share this data with stakeholders and customers while safeguarding the original idea. This minimizes the chances of intellectual property theft as you’ll have tangible data to prove ownership.
Organizations subject to industry regulations
Industries like healthcare and finance must comply with strict legal regulations. Organizations in these sectors often need to preserve data, maintain confidentiality, and ensure integrity according to legal frameworks like NIS-2 or DORA.
Here, too, companies can use immutable backups to comply with regulatory requirements. In addition, solutions like NetApp’s BlueXP Classification help determine which data to retain.
Connecting the dots
How does the immutable backup technology fit in with other backup strategies? Here are some answers.
Immutable backups and air gaps
With air gapping, you isolate a backup medium from your other systems. Since the copy is not connected to the internet or your local network, attackers cannot access the data digitally.
However, the attacker could still try to access your backup by physically breaking into the storage location. Once they do, they can alter the data or make it public. Also, air gapping cannot protect you from internal threats. Authorized malicious insiders could still access the data in its offline location and tamper with it.
So, even if you decide to use air gapping as an additional security measure, you should still combine it with an immutable backup approach. This way, you are protected, even if someone gains access to your air-gapped copy.
Immutable backups and the 3-2-1 rule
The 3-2-1 rule states:
- You should have three (3) copies of your data, one primary copy, and two backup copies
- You should store these copies on two (2) different backup mediums
- One (1) of these copies should be stored off-site, for example in the cloud
The 3-2-1 rule and immutable backups are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they should be combined. One of your three copies should ideally be an immutable copy. This will increase your security posture significantly over a “traditional” 3-2-1 approach that only uses mutable copies.
Immutable backups in the cloud
The cloud is the preferred storage solution for immutable backups. Since these backups require a lot of storage space, it can be cumbersome to store them on-prem. As your backup repository grows, you have to keep investing in your physical servers. In comparison, cloud storage scales quickly and cost-efficiently.
The case for choosing a backup provider
Many companies have their in-house team take care of the backup process. However, there are several good reasons to work with an external backup as a service provider (BaaS):
- Technology. A BaaS provider will use the latest security tech stack. Many in-house teams don’t have the time or the resources to implement these technologies themselves.
- Expertise. An external backup provider specializes in doing one thing well — they know everything about the backup process there is to know. An in-house team can’t compete with that level of specialization.
- Compliance. External backup providers are always up to date when it comes to the latest regulatory requirements. They know exactly what you need to do to comply with directives like NIS-2 or DORA.
- Geo redundancy. BaaS providers store your backup copies across various geographical locations. Should a natural disaster hit one location, you still have other locations to fall back upon.
- Recovery. Creating backups is just one side of the coin. The other is restoring your backups. BaaS providers have proven, battle-tested processes to do so quickly and reliably.
How to choose an immutable backup provider
How do you choose the right service provider? Here are a few factors to consider:
1. Determine your backup requirements
Before you start looking for a service provider, it’s best to assess your organization’s backup requirements. This will give you a better idea of what type of provider to look for and will also help you determine your budget.
For example, a small business with a few local clients may not need to back up all its data and thus will have fewer backup requirements. However, a healthcare provider might have large-scale requirements as they are legally obligated to preserve their patients’ data. Thus, they should choose a provider with the resources to handle this scale.
2. Set a budget
Not all data requires immutability. You can set a reasonable budget for immutable backups by answering these two questions:
- What’s the volume of data that your business needs to preserve under any circumstances?
- How long do you need to back up this data?
You can also save money by choosing a backup plan that’s aligned with your specific backup requirements. For example, if you have a predictable backup volume every month, choosing a fixed monthly payment plan could be a great option. Some providers will offer discounts on such easy-to-maintain, long-running plans.
However, if your immutable backup requirements fluctuate, you need to look for a flexible, but potentially pricier plan.
Don’t cut corners, though. Investing in the right backup solution will save you a lot of money in case of a data breach. It might even save your entire business.
3. Look at your provider’s track record
All service providers boast about their high-quality services. To get a realistic idea about the quality, check the provider’s track record.
Most providers have a portfolio of companies that use their immutable backup services. Some also offer detailed case studies. For instance, Proact has a detailed case study on how they implemented a multi-cloud backup solution for the University of Gothenburg. They also upgraded Liseberg’s IT infrastructure, including an immutable backup solution.
4. Add more security features
Even with immutable backups in place, cyber defense should still be a top priority. A 2023 report by Veeam found that 93 percent of ransomware attacks target backup repositories.
To mitigate this, check your provider’s SLA for features like role-based permissions and access authorization that limit the number of people who can access the data. Also check for features like data encryption, password or key-based protection, and quick incident response.
5. Look for scalability
If your backup volume fluctuates or if you are anticipating rapid growth, choose a vendor that provides a high level of flexibility with their backup plans.
A scalable plan ensures you can expand your storage capacity on short notice. Some vendors also provide a pay-as-you-go payment plan, which is ideal if your backup volume varies from month to month.
6. Pay attention to support and maintenance
Proper customer support and maintenance are essential. You might want to change backup settings, introduce additional security measures, or scale up. A good provider will help you implement these changes seamlessly.
Apart from round-the-clock support, look for self-service tools such as a customer service portal. This will help you to quickly report incidents, raise requests, and follow support case progress.
Safeguard your data with Proact!
Are you looking for a reliable backup service provider, especially when it comes to immutable backups?
Then Proact can help. We always keep your data protected through state-of-the-art backups, ensuring business continuity and minimal downtime for your organization.
Our team of experts works round-the-clock to keep your data safe from all types of cybersecurity threats, ranging from ransomware attacks to accidental deletion by a team member.
Proact’s backup solutions are not standardized, out-of-the-box solutions. We tailor our backup services to your business needs — whether you are in an especially critical industry or must protect client data for compliance reasons. Our first step is always about understanding our client’s backup requirements to make sure we provide the right service.
Next, we’ll create an immutable backup strategy, taking into account your specifications. As we implement the backup solution for you during the final step, we stay committed to providing you with the best support and maintenance. Should there be an issue, our team of experts is available on short notice.
Ready to protect your data with immutable backups? Contact us today for a free demo!