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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
byrahvin112 ( 446269 ) writes:
Tape has one advantage, it's typically air gaped and not even in the tape drive. They are also quite small and lightweight and easy to send offsite.
Disks are typically hot and networked continuously. Any vulnerability in the disk system and it could go down with the ransomware too. Yes there are systems that can air gap the disks. Disks can be sent offsite but if it's a raid system to compensate for the reliability it takes far more weight and space and the entire raid system has to be moved off site. Again there are solutions to this but again it comes at a cost.
Tapes not great but it's ability to air gap and go offsite to secure storage easily and cheaply shouldn't be underestimated. Tape also tends to come in nice turn key systems that are quite expensive but have tremendous reliability. A lot of people forget to think about the what happens if the building burns down and how you recover from it.
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byaccount_deleted ( 4530225 ) writes:
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byJohn-after-logtime ( 6156490 ) writes:
Is anyone really doing off-site disks ?
Hasn't cloud backup replaced that.
byedis ( 266347 ) writes:
Do you have control over your cloud? Is it illusion?
byAnne Thwacks ( 531696 ) writes:
Do you have control over your cloud?
The cloud is the easiest and cheapest way of sending your data to evil-doers.
That is what Gmail and Windows are made for.
I think it was about 20 years ago I heard of RAIT - redundant array of inexpensive tapes. If you are a small organisation, you can have a dual tape drive (per rack if necessary) one live, one standby, and send your snapshots to them. Every night at closing time, you rewoffl the inactive tape, and remove it and take it out of the building+, replacing
byslashdot_commentator ( 444053 ) writes:
The cloud is the easiest and cheapest way of sending your data to evil-doers.
If you're using the cloud to hold archival data, encryption mitigates that issue. Your virtual configuration can also be designed to do encryption on the fly.
People are also neglecting the investment of automated tape libraries. More upfront hardware costs, but much less real-time technician intervention in recovery tasks.
byAmiMoJo ( 196126 ) writes:
Any vulnerability in the disk system and it could go down with the ransomware too.
Most ransomware is not very sophisticated. It will spread over Windows shares that it has write access to, but not for example SSH tunnels used by rsync. Therefore even if you have an on-line disk array, if it is only accessible through a single interface that only supports a limited set of functions, it's pretty safe.
Alternatively you can just have two identically configured storage arrays and simply swap the ethernet cable between them when needed.
byVoyager529 ( 1363959 ) writes:
Any vulnerability in the disk system and it could go down with the ransomware too.
Most ransomware is not very sophisticated. It will spread over Windows shares that it has write access to, but not for example SSH tunnels used by rsync.
I come across ransomware hits 1-3 times a year. There seems to be two basic classes. First is the truly automated kind - the malware itself is a payload of a phishing e-mail or whatever, and it encrypts what it can find - local files, folder shares, etc., and sends a ransom note. This version, like you said, isn't very sophisticated, and is more of a nuisance than a concern - even Windows Volume Shadow Copies can handle the network shares, nuke-and-reload Patient Zero, and you're done before lunch.
The other
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