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Government
The increase in cyber attacks also affects municipalities and other governments. Hackers are trying to gain access to IT infrastructure. They place ransomware on municipal IT systems to extort ransoms. This causes serious service disruptions. Municipalities need to better secure their data. Effective security measures are crucial to prevent attacks.
Municipal IT departments are working hard to improve their security strategies. They implement advanced data protection and cyber security systems. They also conduct regular safety audits. They also train their staff to quickly recognize suspicious activity. These measures reduce the likelihood of successful attacks, thus keeping their systems secure and operational. Nevertheless, it remains difficult for municipalities and government agencies to keep all hackers out. One of the proven solutions against hackers is a physical airgap.
In response to a hack at the Hof van Twente municipality, the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) has advised secure air-gap backups.
Following the VNG’s advice, many municipalities are contacting their regular IT partner. There are several solutions to this problem. You can offload your data externally to a cloud service or a secure Linux server, but all of these solutions are still wired. Although writing away on a so-called “Hardening” Linux server is almost impossible to hack, indeed do not settle for “Almost.” They want to make sure their data is stored securely.
Looking for a storage system with an air-gap, a physical separation between network and storage so that the backup cannot be accessed by hackers through the system? You can look at tape storage, but that is very laborious and slow, apart from some technical obstacles.
Another option are the Silent Bricks. Everyone can see that the moment you remove a Silent Brick from the system, you literally create an air-gap. Silent Bricks additionally require few actions; they are easy to use. Also important is the link to Veeam. Many municipalities work with Veeam Backup, which backs up to the work site at night. Then a copy is written away to the fallback location. After those two jobs comes a third job to feed a replication system with this data based on the backups. So then you get a comprehensive air-gapped backup system paired with Veeam.
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