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Introduction
The risk of a cybersecurity failure is no longer limited to the reputation of a company, or something to be borne by its customers, but is an existential risk to the company itself. Ransomware extorts the business with the one universal thing all businesses value – their own data. Needless to say, you need to be well prepared for this danger.
In this article, we will help you understand how Ransomware Recovery by Druva can help save the day in case you are unfortunately attacked by ransomware.
In case of an infection, to quarantine is to isolate the infected parts in order to contain the infection and not allow it to spread. To this effect, Ransomware Recovery enables you to quarantine infected snapshots on the impacted resources, which helps safeguard your system from further infection by barring users or administrators from downloading or restoring data to other resources.
To reduce downtime and loss of productivity, you can restore the data from the latest secure snapshot that you deem safe and get the resource operational again.
Here's how you can use Ransomware Recovery to quarantine infected snapshots in the following ways:
Manually search for the impacted resource and quarantine the infected or all the snapshots.
Integrate Ransomware Recovery with third-party security and incident response solutions and automate the response to quarantine the resources using Ransomware Recovery APIs.
Know the impact of quarantining
After you quarantine snapshots, access to the quarantined snapshots is blocked for the administrators and the users of that resource.
Administrators and users cannot download data or restore data from the quarantined snapshots.
You can identify quarantined snapshots by the lock icon displayed beside the snapshot creation timestamp in the Restore Data window. For more information about quarantined snapshots restore, see Quarantining virtual machines restore.
❗ Important
The data in the unquarantined (clean) snapshots of the resource are still accessible and can be viewed, downloaded, or restored by administrators.
Decide your approach
Druva enables you to set up your response to the Ransomware Recovery. You can either manually quarantine snapshots on an impacted virtual machine or automate the quarantine process by integrating with third-party security and incident response solutions using Ransomware Recovery APIs.
Manually quarantine infected snapshots
The manual way of quarantining the snapshots on a resource is helpful when you get to know about an impacted virtual machine from a trusted source such as the administrator themselves or alerts raised by your security infrastructure and antivirus software about a potential risk.
Prerequisites
Identify the potential date when the resource was infected by ransomware. It helps you decide from which date onwards you want to quarantine the snapshots on the resource.
📝 Note
If you are unaware or not sure about the date, you can start quarantining the snapshots of the impacted resource from the current date or from January 6, 2020, a system-defined limit, before which you cannot quarantine snapshots.
💡 Tip
You can always talk to the people in your organization whose virtual machines are impacted and track their potential activities such as the files they downloaded or interacted with on a particular day that infected the virtual machine.
Choose the best way to quarantine the resource
You can manually quarantine virtual machines using any of the following available methods -
Search and then quarantine a resource - Use this option when you want to search for an impacted resource, identify the snapshots, and then take quarantine action on the snapshots. To use this option, see Search and quarantine a resource.
Quarantine resources in bulk using CSV - Use this option when you have to quarantine multiple virtual machines and have the following information available with you to save on your efforts -
Organization Name - The name of the organization that contains the virtual machine that you want to quarantine.
Virtual Machine Name - Name of the vCenter or the ESXi Host Name that you want to quarantine.
HostIP - The IP address of the hostname.
From Date - The date from which you want to quarantine the snapshots, in the YYYY-MM-DD format. This should be the date on which the virtual machine was impacted. If you do not enter a date, it will start quarantining all snapshots of the virtual machine from January 6, 2020.
To Date - The date till which you want to quarantine the server, in the YYYY-MM-DD format. If you want to quarantine snapshots in a specific time period, enter the date until which you want to quarantine snapshots. If you do not enter a date, Druva will keep quarantining snapshots indefinitely.
To use this option, see Quarantine snapshots in bulk using CSV.Resource Type - The resource type which you want to quarantine. For example, VMware.
Search and quarantine a resource
Use this option when you want to search for a virtual machine, identify the snapshots, and then quarantine it.
Procedure
Log in to Druva Cloud Platform (DCP) Console.
On the DCP Console dashboard, under Cyber Resilience, click the Ransomware Recovery service.
On the left pane, click Quarantine Bay to view a list of all quarantined resources.
Click Add Resources > Find Resources. Select Virtual Machines (VMware) as the resource type.
Search for the impacted virtual machine. You can search for virtual machines using either one or a combination of the Organizations, vCenter/ESXi Host name, and Virtual Machine Name.
Select the virtual machines on which you want to quarantine the snapshots and click Next.
On the Quarantine Response page, select one of the following based on the information available with you -
Snapshots within date range - Choose this option only if you are sure about the dates when the resource was impacted. If you are not sure about the date choose the next method: Quarantine all snapshots.
When you choose quarantine Snapshots within the date range, you can specify and add one or more date ranges to quarantine all the snapshots for the selected resource within the defined ranges. All the snapshots formed on the virtual machines due to backups within the defined ranges will be moved to a quarantine state.❗ Important
You can select snapshots for quarantine not earlier than January 6, 2020.
UTC timezone is used to quarantine a resource.. You must factor in the difference between the server time zone and UTC zone while selecting the dates.
Quarantine all snapshots - Choose this method if you are unsure about the exact date when the resource may have been impacted. When you choose - Quarantine all snapshots - it will quarantine all the snapshots after January 6, 2020 (a system-defined limit) and keep quarantining all the future snapshots formed due to virtual machines backups.
7. Click Finish.
Quarantining of snapshots starts based on the selection of options mentioned above. See What's next to take the suggested course of action.
Quarantine snapshots in bulk using CSV
Use this option when you want to quarantine snapshots for multiple servers.
Procedure
Log in to Druva Cloud Platform (DCP) Console.
On the DCP Console dashboard, under Cyber Resilience, click the Ransomware Recovery service.
On the left pane, click Quarantine Bay to view a list of all quarantined resources.
Click Add Resources > Import CSV. The Import from CSV dialog box appears.
Download the sample CSV file.
Open the CSV file and provide the following information in the required format:
Organization Name - The name of the organization that contains the virtual machine that you want to quarantine.
Virtual Machine Name - Name of the virtual machine that you want to quarantine.
From Date - The date from which you want to quarantine the snapshots, in the YYYY-MM-DD format. This should be the date on which the virtual machine was impacted.
❗ Important
If you do not mention any date, it will start quarantining all snapshots of the virtual machine from January 6, 2020.
Resource Type - The resource type which you want to quarantine. For example, VMware.
To Date - The date till which you want to quarantine the virtual machine, in the YYYY-MM-DD format. If you want to quarantine snapshots in a specific time period, enter the date till which Druva should quarantine snapshots.
❗ Important
If you do not mention any end date, it will keep quarantining snapshots indefinitely.
Save the CSV.
On the Import from CSV dialog box, select the CSV file and click Import.
After the CSV is validated, the snapshots on the virtual machines of the organizations mentioned in the CSV are quarantined.
You have successfully quarantined the infected resources, which will now help contain the ransomware attack. Refresh the Quarantine Bay page to view the quarantined list of virtual machines.
What’s next?
Now that you have now quarantined the infected snapshots, you might be wondering what to do next? You can take the following actions to contain the ransomware and bring up the resource to resume productivity.
❗ Important
We highly recommend that you work with your Data Security and IT teams to take appropriate steps to resolve such a situation.
Exclude the suspected file types from being backed up. Once you identify the name, file type, and file extension of the ransomware, you can exclude those file types and restrict them from being backed up from other virtual machines.
Share the impacted virtual machines data with the Data and Information security team of your organization for further analysis of the infected data and the virtual machine.
Allocate a new virtual machine to the user. When you are replacing the infected virtual machine with a new virtual machine, you can restore the last clean snapshot to the new virtual machine using Restore To Alternate Location option. Once you replace the virtual machine, ensure that you unquarantine future snapshots of the impacted virtual machines. Otherwise, Druva will keep quarantining the snapshots even in the new virtual machine. To unquarantine a resource, see Unquarantine a resource.
Unquarantine a resource or remove a resource from quarantine bay
After you have completed the required inquiry into the impacted resources with the help of your Data Security and IT teams, you may find that some resources were falsely marked as ransomware impacted. In this case, you might want to remove the resource and the snapshots from the quarantined state and mark it as clean!
When you unquaratine a resource, it removes all the specified or defined quarantine ranges for that resource from the quarantine state.
After you unquarantine the resource, administrators and users can again securely restore and download data from those clean snapshots, resulting in no data loss.
Procedure
Log in to Druva Cloud Platform (DCP) Console.
On the DCP Console dashboard, under Cyber Resilience, click the Ransomware Recovery service.
On the left pane, click Quarantine Bay to view a list of all quarantined resources.
Select the resource that you want to remove.
Click more options > Remove from Quarantine Bay.
Once removed, users and administrators can access the data in the unquarantined snapshots and can download and restore it.
Delete infected snapshots of a resource
❗ Important
You cannot delete snapshots of a resource if Data Lock is enabled for that resource in the backup policy.
You might have to clean the existing virtual machine or provide a new virtual machine to the user after your Data or Information Security teams have completed their analysis on the impacted virtual machine.
After receiving access to the new virtual machine, the user can restore the last clean snapshot of the old virtual machine. Once the restore activity is complete, you can delete the infected snapshots of the virtual machine.
💡 Tip
Snapshot deletion is irreversible. You cannot access or recover any data from the deleted snapshots, which are not displayed in the Restore Data window in the Druva Management Console.
Procedure
Log in to Druva Cloud Platform (DCP) Console.
On the DCP Console dashboard, under Cyber Resilience, click the Ransomware Recovery service.
On the left pane, click Quarantine Bay to view a list of all quarantined resources.
Click the resource name to view the snapshots of that resource.
Click the Snapshots tab. The list of all the infected snapshots is displayed. Select the snapshot to be deleted and then click Delete Snapshot.
On the Confirm Deletion confirmation pop-up, specify the reason for deletion (the reason is mandatory with a character limit between 10-150) and then click Delete. Data, once deleted, cannot be retrieved. The reason for deletion will be captured in the Audit Trail for auditing purposes.
📝 Note
In the case of deleted virtual machines, you cannot view the quarantine range for those virtual machines. However, you can retrieve the deleted virtual machines and view their quarantine range with the Rollback Action option.
Automatically quarantine infected snapshots using APIs
You can use APIs to integrate Ransomware Recovery with your existing security tools or build custom scripts to automatically take action if there is a ransomware attack.
Here are a few links to help you get started:
To learn more about Druva APIs, visit our developer portal.
See the Ransomware Recovery APIs to try out the APIs that we offering to make your organization more secure.
The following is a probable workflow if you know the IDs of the infected servers and the date of infection and want to quarantine snapshots using APIs.